Allu Arjun recently became the first Telugu actor to win the National Award for Best Actor. He bagged the prestigious trophy for Sukumar’s Pushpa: The Rise.
Earlier this year, Allu Arjun marked two decades in the film industry. Touted to be one of the biggest superstars in Telugu cinema, the actor has delivered several blockbuster films in his career and earned a huge fanbase.
Now, Allu has added yet another feat to his list of achievements by becoming the first Telugu actor to win the National Film Award for Best Actor.
In an interview with Variety, the Ala Vaikunthapuramuloo actor reacted to his historic win and said, “Getting the national award is the highest official respect you can get. What we realized was that in 69 years of Telugu cinema, while other technicians and directors have won, no actor had won best actor at the national awards. So that was a pathbreaking achievement and became the pride of the Telugu people. I was glad that I could contribute to it in a small way.”
Attributing Pushpa: The Rise‘s massive success to its rootedness, Allu explained that the film connected across all languages because of the common man factor and the characterizations’ attitude.
The actor continued, “We wanted to make very authentic, rustic, rooted storytelling. I think that authenticity and honesty paid off, we were not trying to be somebody else, we were trying to be who we are and still trying to appeal to everybody else. It’s like how they say, going local is going global.”
Allu also spoke about its much anticipated Pushpa 2: The Rule which is due for release in mid-2024. He revealed that the sequel will be notch above the first part and has got more adrenaline-rush moments.
Further, in the same interview, the Sarrainodu actor said that his sole aim is to bring great performances in commercial cinema.
“It’s a mindset that if you want to do a great artistic film, you need to do a small film and if you need to do a commercial film, you need to do a film that has got less performance. I genuinely feel commercial cinema has tremendous scope for artistic performances – it’s just that we don’t explore it.
Allu signed off by saying that he wants to pick up stories and narratives which have a unique combination of performances and great commercial moments.
