RRR: SS Rajamouli reacts to claims that Ram Charan got more screen time than Jr NTR, says ‘Tarak saves Charan twice’

Highlighting Tarak’s performance, Rajamouli said that he delivered the ‘epitome’ of acting in the Komuram Bheemudo sequence, and that ‘no one can achieve’ what he did in the film. “There is no RRR, there is no Rs 1000 crore if the balance wasn’t perfect between these two actors,” the filmmaker told Bollywood Hungama.

He said, “That was not the right way of putting it, that Charan walked away with all the accolades. Of course, Charan did a splendid job, and Tarak did a mindblowing job. As a director, I can’t be more happy with the kind of output the both of them gave. But saying that one actor is better than the other is the way you look at it. If you feel for one person, then you’ll… If you look at it from a certain perspective, it might seem like one actor has been given more screen space or more elevation scenes.”

Rajamouli continued, “For example, I can say that Charan has been given more space in the climax, because it is the last thing that you walk away with. It seems like Charan is getting more attention than Tarak. But if I had stopped the film after Komuram Bheemudo, it would look like Charan is just a bystander and Tarak is taking the entire screen space. As a storyteller, you shouldn’t do that kind of judgement. Always look at how much empathy, as an audience, you are feeling for the characters.”

Rajamouli added, “If you look at the story, Tarak saves Charan twice. Charan saves Tarak once. There is one point where Charan says, ‘For 15 years, I was not clear what my goal was. Tarak showed me the way. I thought weapon was a physical thing, but Tarak showed me that weapon is an emotion.’ If you look at it in this way, then Tarak is the hero and Charan is just foll0wing him. But if you look at it in another way, when Charan asks, ‘What can I give you?’ and Tarak says ‘Give me shiksha’, then Charan is the teacher and Tarak is the disciple.”

Hand on heart, Rajamouli said, no other actor in the country could have done what Tarak did in the Komuram Bheemudo song sequence. He showed ‘pain, betrayal, subjugation to the motherland’. RRR has become the third film in the history of Indian cinema to make more than Rs 1000 crore at the worldwide box office.