For someone who’s extremely selective about the films he does, actor Allu Sirish is awfully relaxed ahead of his film’s release. Sleep deprived from promotions, the actor punctually arrives at the Geeta Arts office and gets talking about upcoming film Srirastu Subhamastu.
The excitement in his voice is palpable as he shows clips of the music director (SS Thaman) at work and their hashtag campaign on Twitter. Clearly Sirish cares about his movie, and he feels the team has a winner on its hands.
“Srirastu Subhamastu is a story about a rich boy who falls in love with a simple girl and the kind of challenges and obstacles he faces to win over her. It’s quite simple if you say it in one line, but a film can’t be like that. It has a lot of complexities. It deals with conflict with values in the modern day. The films taps into a lot of middle-class emotions,” shares Sirish.
The actor has been on a promotional spree over the last fortnight along with co-star Lavanya Tripathi and the both of them have become great friends over the course of these few months. “What sets Lavanya apart from her contemporaries is that she’s very natural as an actor, and is not too rehearsed. I only met her as a professional first, we dint know each other from before. After a week, we started bonding, which really helped our on-screen chemistry. Even after watching 30-40 times, I still feel fresh looking at our scenes. We hit a very natural note and I feel people will like our pairing,” Sirish says, enthusiastically.
Having featured as a child artist in Pratibandh (1990) and Mayabazar (1995), Sirish has taken a while to get into mainstream films as an actor. Srisastu Subhamastu is only his third film as an actor after Gouravam (2013) and Kotha Janta (2014).
“My taste doesn’t let me do many films. Though I like watching a film like Sarrainodu, I don’t think I’m ready for it. I don’t think I can pull it off now. I’m not a big fan of psychological thrillers or horror comedies. I don’t like doing mindless comedies or just pure masala films. So that leaves me with very little choice. And then, my process on working on a film is time-consuming. I treat every film like a journey and I’m involved with it right from the start. I don’t just come to the set, read my lines and go off,” explains the 29-year-old.
The film is already doing the rounds on social media with the hashtag #Srirastu Subhamastu. Sirish believes that social media promotions is something you can’t ignore today. “Though I was always on social media, we never used it as a publicity tool. Today social media has gone to tier-II cities as well and movie-going audiences are on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Also, it was more important to use social media for this movie in particular, because this is not a mass film so this is our audience (people on social media),” he observes.
With Srirastu Subhamastu, there’s also an attempt to break free from the concept of including songs in films, just for the sake of it.
“There are only three songs in the film. We were thinking of putting another song but it was coming as a speed breaker. I have noticed that when you insert songs when they are not required, people get distracted. We wanted to do away with this format of five songs. The music has come out well and I’m happy that all of them have fit in seamlessly and that there’s no jerk to the narration,” Sirish points out.
Up next, the actor has another film which will be produced by Shailendra Babu. “The script is ready but I’ve asked for two months time because I want to get completely done with Srirastu Subhamastu. I have just this one film up next, I guess I need to work on my pace,” he signs off, with a smile.