Udhayanidhi Stalin: Nayakudu’s story has universal appeal and will strike a chord in Telugu too

Udhayanidhi Stalin, who is bidding goodbye to acting and plans to focus on his political career, was recently seen in the Tamil drama Maamannan directed by Mari Selvaraj, that he’d also produced under Red Giant Movies. The film is getting a Telugu release as Nayakudu this weekend, distributed by the Asian Group and Suresh Productions in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In a chat with the media, he expresses confidence about its box office prospects in Telugu.

The actor-producer admits his plan was to make Maamannan only as a Tamil film and he didn’t view it as a multilingual release. He’s quite aware that his earlier films that were dubbed in Telugu didn’t perform as per expectations. After noticing Maamannan’s reception in TN, leading names approached him for the Telugu rights and he’s now optimistic of its performance in both the states.

He believes Nayakudu has a very good story to tell, discussing social justice and equality among people and labels it a political drama. It has universal appeal and it will strike a chord with the Telugu audiences as well, he’s confident. Udhayanidhi feels audiences of this generation have an appetite to watch all films regardless of language and is happy to have sold the rights to the Asian Group and Suresh Productions.

“I liked the story the moment I heard it. I acted in many commercial entertainers with a lot of humour and drama in them. The last commercial film I was part of, Manithan, the remake of Jolly LLB, was a big hit and I wanted to do a comedy film again. Mari Selvaraj left me spellbound with Nayakudu. The film offered me a lot of scope to perform besides having a social message,” he adds.

He was to work on a film under Kamal Haasan’s production house RKFI, when he had no intentions of quitting films. However, after Karnan, Udhayanidhi called Mari Selvaraj, expressing his interest to work with him. “While he initially declined the offer given his prior commitments, he couldn’t say no when I told that this would be my last film.”

The last time Udhayanidhi worked with Vadivelu, he was a producer for Suriya’s Aadhavan, where the latter had a hilarious role. When Mari Selvaraj narrated Maamannan’s story, he was particular about casting Vadivelu for the father character. “I was really shocked to hear that. I wasn’t sure if Vadivelu would say yes to it because it was a serious film. I requested him to do it and said it was my last film. I’m thrilled to have worked with Fahadh Faasil and Keerthy Suresh too.”