Prabhas says Baahubali’s success led to extreme stress: ‘I didn’t sleep properly for years’

That same success, however, came with a cost. Prabhas described the period immediately following Baahubali as one of the most stressful stretches of his career, driven by the pressure of choosing a worthy follow up. “What’s next for me? A high-packed drama like Baahubali? Something more visual? But that was Rajamouli,” he said, explaining that the team considered several different directions before settling on anything concrete. “We thought we’d do a screenplay-based film. Then we thought we’d do a love story. There were discussions with Prashanth Neel and Nag Ashwin,” he revealed, naming two directors who would later go on to define very different chapters of his post-Baahubali career.

Also Read: Did Prabhas, Rana Daggubati and Anushka Shetty just tease Baahubali 3? Fans think so

He was candid about the toll this indecision took on him personally. “I couldn’t sleep properly for two or three years after Baahubali. The level of responsibility in every department suddenly increased a thousandfold. Those were the most stressful years of my life after Baahubali,” he said. Looking back, he credited that very pressure, and the film that caused it, with eventually leading him toward two of his more recent major releases. “We had the mother, the great Baahubali, which made it possible for us to go on and make Kalki and Salaar. It’s all because Baahubali happened first,” he said.

The conversations he referenced eventually translated into Salaar, directed by Prashanth Neel and released in 2023, and Kalki 2898 AD, directed by Nag Ashwin and released in 2024, both of which became major commercial successes in their own right and reinforced Prabhas’s standing as one of the few Indian actors capable of anchoring big budget, pan-India productions.