Naga Chaitanya on streaming debut with Dhootha and media scrutiny on his personal life: ‘People close to me know the truth’

When asked how does he look at the intrusive media reporting, Naga Chaitanya told Indianexpress.com that his goal is to be spoken about his craft rather than what is happening in his personal life.

“I really don’t bother about it beyond a point. People close to me will know the truth. Apart from that, I want to be known for my work as an actor more than what’s happening in my personal life. So I try to focus more on my craft, let the movies do the talking. At the end of the day, if my movies are great and entertain the audience, that’s what I want them to remember me for,” he added.

After a film career of more than a decade, Naga Chaitanya will enter the world of OTT with Prime Video’s first long-format Telugu original series, Dhootha. Billed as a supernatural suspense-thriller, the eight-episode series also stars Parvathy Thiruvothu, Priya Bhavani Shankar, and Prachi Desai.

While Naga Chaitanya was in Mumbai to promote the show, it wasn’t his first time in the city. Before he began his acting journey, Naga said he spent close to four months in the city as an acting student.

“I was in college doing my BCom and I told my parents that I want to act. They said, ‘Ok, but why don’t you go for an acting workshop, a summer course? See if you genuinely like acting or is it the whole image around it.’ So during my second year college holidays, I went to an acting school in Lokhandwala. I was in Mumbai for about three-four months. That acting course gave me a lot of clarity, I knew I wanted to try it out,” he recalled.

While he was set doing film in Telugu, it was during the pandemic when he watched a lot of movies and series on OTT– which opened up his mind. As an actor, Naga said he wanted to explore the episodic format, “to live and breathe the character.”

 

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“On OTT, you can experiments with genres, scripts. There are certain things you can’t do on the big screen, because people come to the theatres with a certain kind of expectations. If you want to do big canvas commercial films, there are expectations, because there are efforts people put in to come to the theatre, pay money. But with OTT, it is different. The attitude and mindset is different. So as an actor I really wanted to explore and get the exposure, as people from all over the world can watch.”

What also helped was how the streaming platform freed him from the trappings of a movie. There were no songs, so fight sequences, no commercial elements deliberately placed to woo the audience.

According to the official synopsis, death starts to follow people around Sagar (Naga Chaitanya), as he discovers “shreds of newspapers predicting horrific incidents that go beyond his worst nightmare.” The show is directed by Vikram K Kumar.

“The supernatural thriller genre is something that I love watching and also what I wanted to come out of my comfort zone and attempt something like this. The script has no songs, no typical fights, so I don’t know how it would play out in a theatrical format. A script like this deserves 300 +minutes of time to bring out all the twists,” he added.

Produced by Sharrath Marar under the banner of NorthStar Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, the series will stream in Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam on Prime Video starting December 1.