Santhu’s film Dove, which is in the post production stages, features Sa Ra Govindu’s son Anup playing the lead. However, Anup was not the first choice for the film. Apparently, the makers of Dove had initially planned to sign on Atharvaa, who is the son of the late South Indian star Murali.
In fact, Anup’s father Sa Ra Govindu took the director to Atharvaa’s house to finalise him for the film. Sadly, it did not work out for the actor because he was doing Bala’s film Paradesi, which required him to have a beard and long hair. Santhu says, “We wanted to rope in Murali’s son for two reasons. One is that his father Murali was popular in the Kannada industry and secondly, we had originally planned for a bilingual film in Kannada and Tamil and Atharvaa seemed like the the right choice. In fact, he was very keen to do a Kannada film because of his father’s associations with the industry. But Paradesi required him to maintain his current look for almost six months to a year. Since I had my script ready and wanted to start off immediately, we had to abandon our plans of using Atharvaa for this film.”
Coincidentally, when the director was dropping off Sa Ra Govindu at his residence on his way back from Chennai, he saw the former’s son Anup, who was then in his 1st year of PUC.
“I could connect with the young boy the moment I saw him. Since I was planning a film with a fresh face, Anup was the right choice. Anup’s entry into the Kannada industry was by accident, but he has justified his role and I think everyone watching the movie will think the same,” he says.