Exclusive! Dheekshith Shetty: When I bagged Dasara, no one believed my role would be important

Dheekshith Shetty was on cloud nine when he bagged a role in Telugu Star Nani’s big-ticket Dasara. But even though he said that he was playing Nani’s friend, which was a pivotal character, not many believed that it would be as important as it eventually turned out to be. “There is an image of the ‘friend’ character in commercial cinema and most people thought I also got such a stereotypical side role. No one believed I would get a role as important as Suri in such a big production. When the introduction sequence came onscreen, these very people were shocked and told me that it took them by pleasant surprise. But they were also happy for me that the team did justice to my role in Dasara. Much of the feedback I got was about audiences back home being proud that a relatively new Kannada actor could go to another industry and not only be a part of a big production, but also get a good role” says Dheekshith.

After the film came out, though, audiences have been showering Dheekshith with a lot of love, with the actor’s biggest moments of pride coming when Chiranjeevi and SS Rajamouli called out his performance in their appreciation messages. But what’s also been encouraging is the fact that he’s been getting a steady stream of movie offers both in Kannada and Telugu, with the latter a tad more, which is understandable, given that he has had more releases in Tollywood than back home yet. “Although I have been busy with the shoot of a Telugu web series, in my free time I have been listening to a lot of scripts, some of which are quite exciting and have good teams behind them. The plan is to choose scripts in genres that I have not attempted before, like, for instance, comedy,” he says.