Allu Arjun said he had been manifesting National Award ever since Sukumar narrated him the story of Pushpa.
Allu Arjun took the nation by storm with Sukumar’s 2021 Telugu film Pushpa: The Rise. Last year, the actor created history by becoming the first Telugu actor to win a National Award for his performance.
Recently when Allu graced the show ‘Unstoppable With NBK’, the actor recalled how he had been manifesting this win since the conception of the film.
He shared, “I am sharing this for the first time. I haven’t told this to anybody before. When Sukumar and I were planning Pushpa, as soon as he narrated me the story, I requested him just one thing, ‘I don’t mind even if the film is not a hit. But I must win the National Award for this film and that would be possible only if you make it happen.”
The ‘Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo’ star said that Sukumar assured him that he would try his best to achieve this.
“You won’t believe this. For every single shot, he would say, “Darling, for a National Award, this range isn’t good enough.” This happened over every take and shot. Every conversation between both of us used to be about that,” Allu Arjun recalled.
When NBK asked Allu Arjun if he already had National Award in his mind, the latter replied in affirmative, and continued, “Now that I have won it, I think I can say this. I was manifesting it. I knew my target since the beginning, and my focus remained on the same.”
Further, in the same episode, Allu Arjun shared how once when he was checking the list of National Award winners list, he couldn’t find a single Telugu name.
“I just saw Nagarjuna sir’s name, but he too had received it for some special role. There was no one as Best Actor,” the Telugu actor recalled and added how that stayed in his mind.
Allu Arjun said, “I thought to myself, “There were so many great actors. How did they miss it? How did your generation miss it? What about previous generations? With so many stalwarts in acting in Tollywood, how did we not get the award.”
He also confessed that he was more sad than happy when he received the National Award.
Explaining the reason behind it, he shared, “I was feeling it took so long for a Telugu star to received this.” The actor said that it was at this moment when he decided that this won’t be his last.
Currently, Allu Arjun is gearing up for the release of Pushpa 2: The Rule. The film also stars Rashmika Mandanna and Fahadh Faasil.
