Vijay Deverakonda on breaking through the nepotic Telugu industry: ‘Probably the single hardest thing I’ve done in my life’

In 2016, Vijay Deverakonda got attention for turning his modest romantic comedy Pelli Choopulu to a multiple National Award winning hit. A year later, he delivered the blockbuster Arjun Reddy. But the actor says behind his consecutive public success was years of private struggle, where he felt he had “nowhere to go” because “nobody was looking.”
Vijay Deverakonda has emerged as the breakout star of the Telugu industry, which is dominated stars from film families, from Rana Daggubati, Mahesh Babu, Jr. NTR, Allu Arjun, Naga Chaitanya to Prabhas. As he now gears up to transition to Bollywood with his upcoming Liger, the actor reflects on his journey so far and says it wasn’t a cake walk.
“It’s not easy. If someone wants to attempt it… It’s probably the single hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life, to find a platform where your voice can be heard and you can be seen as an actor. It was really hard,” Vijay Deverakonda says in a group interview.

 
The actor says, before his screen debut in a supporting role in 2012’s Life Is Beautiful, he was actively involved in theatre. Vijay would do one play and have three theatre groups waiting to sign him up. Within no time, he starred in six plays consecutively. Naturally, he thought, filmmakers would rush to cast him.
But no one did.
“When I finished theatre, I thought I would announce I want to be an actor and all the producers will line up. I thought I’ll debut and I’ll become an actor. But suddenly when I wanted to, there was nowhere to go or talk to. Nobody was looking.
“I would apply for audition calls and then wait for casting opportunities, like every struggling actor does. Every night I would sleep with a thought that I would get a call. From one of my plays, somebody spotted me I did a small role and then director Sekhar Kammula gave me a casting call. It was a supporting role. But then again, there was no work for one year.”

The work that did come in later, Vijay Deverakonda says, were trying to slot him in more supporting roles. But Vijay believed he was meant for “something big”. So he waited and then, along with a few friends of his, he made Pelli Choopulu.
“We made it in Rs 60 lakhs, none of us took any money. We raised some money from two investors. It was a struggle to release it. We went around to every production house showing the film, asking people to help release it. There was one particular producer who saw it and liked it.
“He decided to help us release it. It opened very small but went on to make Rs 25-30 crore and eventually got a National Award. That launched me, it was my first film as a solo lead. Suddenly everybody knew me. After that Arjun Reddy happened and since then I haven’t been out of work,” he adds.

 
After Arjun Reddy, Vijay Deverakonda went on to star in films like Geetha Govindam, Dear Comrade and World Famous Lover. His latest Liger, which was shot simultaneously in Hindi and Telugu, aligned with the kind of cinema Vijay Deverakonda was craving to do.
“I have decided to pick only films that I know that will work. And I believe I can. Maybe I’m naïve to believe this. But I believe that I can pick films and make sure that they work. So I’ve decided to work only with people that can ensure the same vision and scripts that I really like,” he says.
Co-starring Ananya Panday, Liger is scheduled to open in cinemas on August 25. The film’s release comes at a time when most Hindi movies have failed at the box office, with many believing that South Indian cinema is managing to come out with better films. But Vijay says, everything is cyclical.
“There’s a certain kind of cinema that India is watching and it so happens that the South of India is making it. But it’s a cycle, right now this is working then people will be tired of this and something else will come. Nothing is permanent,” he adds.