“I wish I had the time to sit back and chill”
On being asked what it’s like to have back-to-back hits, Vijay Deverakonda appears rather humble about it. “Life goes on. It feels nice in moments. It doesn’t feel like anything sometimes because you are so consumed by what you are creating next that it takes up everything. There is not enough time to sit back and absorb and try and react to what happened because there is so much happening right now. I barely find time to sit and think what I did in the last one year.” Is that his humility speaking? “I am not being humble because this is the reality. I wish I had the time to sit back and throw my hands back, chill and think oh yeah we did this!” he adds.
“I get a lot of love from Tamil Nadu!”
Vijay forayed into Tamil cinema with NOTA. On choosing the project, he said that it all stemmed from TN’s love for him. “After Pelli Choopulu, there was a lot of love from Tamil Nadu in terms of social media, the letters and gifts. The gifts are sent to my Rowdy club, my Rowdy partners and to my Rowdy office as it is in public domain. So I wanted to do something for them. I know Pelli Choopulu and Geetha Govindam did super well in Tamil too,” he shares.
Taking up NOTA felt like doing something more personal, but he admits that he was scared. “I cannot act without knowing the language. Though I wanted to, I was avoiding it as I did not have the potential to pull off a Tamil film because of the language barrier. When I heard NOTA, I really felt I need to be a part of this film. Though they were ready to adapt it to Telugu, all the fun is because it is coming from Tamil politicians, the situation there; I felt it was time that I take this move. I realised the only way I will learn Tamil is on the job. So, it was a combination of wanting to do something in Tamil and also the script coming my way which I really liked, but it was excruciatingly hard, painful and tiring.”
