Rana Daggubati: It was very hard to hurl expletives at my uncle Venkatesh in Rana Naidu

Talking about working with Venkatesh, Rana Daggubati said, “From the time I made it in my career, I knew I would do this at some point in my life. And I just wanted it to not be a cliche, and be something that we can consistently revisit. Revisit those characters over and over again. I couldn’t have asked for anything better than Rana Naidu, these filmmakers and Netflix. So, I am very happy.”

Echoing his thoughts Venkatesh, who plays the character of Naga in Rana Naidu, said it was ‘fantastic’ to share screen space with Rana. “I mean it was really wonderful. I got to work with my nephew Rana and he’s done a wonderful job,” he said.

The Venky Mama actor added, “But as Rana was saying, it was not the usual kind of family drama. I am not soft with him. We are not singing songs. This isn’t what people will expect from us. This is very different. There are some hard hitting dialogues. But it was really nice and I am really glad that we got to do it. There is a lot of work in it.”

In the trailer, Venkatesh and Rana Daggubati were seen sharing a tumultuous equation as they play an estranged father-son duo. Talking about playing Naga, Venkatesh said, “The beauty of Naga Naidu is that it came out so well. He’s so natural. I was surprised by myself that I could express those expressions. And as I said Karan and Suparn were always there to encourage me. I think there was some magic happening on the set.”

The duo was further quizzed on the tough part of working with family. Taking the lead, Rana Daggubati said that it was hurling expletives at each other.

“In this show, I had to hate the person I love the most and that’s my uncle. It is very hard to use foul language because it was stressing him and stressing me too. It was fine as long as it was in Hindi but in Telugu, it was too much. That was the most difficult part,” he said.

During the event, Venkatesh also surprised everyone by singing his popular song “Phoolon Sa” from Anari. The actor said that it’s been 30 long years since Anari and now he is coming back with Rana Naidu which is a kind of ‘jump’ for him. Calling it ‘crazy and wild’, Venkatesh said he’s glad he got to do something different and challenging with the show.

“I am supposed to be a family hero, soft spoken guy. I also did a lot of comedy films but this is something really amazing. I got to do something different. It was also very difficult but Karan said we will find a way and the final output is really fantastic. I got to speak crazy lines, hard hitting dialogues.”

Directed by Karan Anshuman and Suparn Verma, Rana Naidu also stars Surveen Chawla, Sushant Singh, Abhishek Banerjee, Gaurav Chopra, Ashish Vidyarthi and Rajesh Jais. It will drop on Netflix on March 10.