Exclusive! Pranam Devaraj is set to turn mass hero with the Kannada-Telugu bilingual Vairam

Pranam Devaraj, the younger son of Dynamic Star Devaraj, made his film debut in early 2019 with the Kannada remake of the Telugu film Kumari 21F, which was not a typical commercial film. At the time, Pranam was clear that his choice of launch vehicle was driven by the desire to establish himself as an artiste and not a hero. The film didn’t have standard masala movie fare, which he reckoned he could do in his later projects.

As it turns out, Pranam is doing all of that in his second film, a Kannada-Telugu bilingual called Vairam that he is in the process of completing. The film is a commercial flick, but one that leans heavily on the weight of its content, he says. The decision to do a full-fledged commercial film as his next is a direct outcome of Kumari 21F, says Pranam, remaining non-committal about whether the reception to his debut had anything to do with this. “It was a conscious choice, though, to do a commercial film as my next. I wanted to reach out to the masses. But having said that, Vairam is a subject that will appeal to all audiences,” he admits, adding, “Vairam is a massy love story with a message in it – a content-oriented commercial film. The movie is based on religion; wherein there’s a villain, played by Garuda Ram, who is strong in his belief and puts religion before anything else. He does not have a good background and yet is trying to win the panchayat elections in a small town. A lot of the narrative follows what he does. I play an electrician in the same town, who falls in love with this man’ daughter. As our paths cross, how I try to change him forms the rest of the narrative. The message that we are trying to drive home is that we are human beings and should look out for each other, with religion and other such things being secondary,” says the actor, who’s currently shooting for the last leg of the film, a song.

But isn’t religion a touchy subject, especially in the current scheme of things in the country? “Oh yes, it is, but we are made sure that we are not hurting any religious feelings/sentiments and have generalized it completely. The focus is not on one particular religion or their beliefs; the play is only on the characters. I have watched the film while dubbing for the Kannada version and I think it has come out beautifully,” says Pranam.

Interestingly, there’s not much information about Vairam in the public domain. “That was not intentional, but every time we wanted to release some information, something or the other would happen and we had to cancel our plans. Now that the film is nearly done, we thought it is the right time to let people know about it. In fact, a first look release for the Kannada version should happen sometime soon,” says Pranam, who is paired with newbie Monal Jagtani. The film, he adds, is the directorial debut of Sai Shivan, who has worked with a lot of popular Tollywood directors earlier.

The title, Vairam, incidentally, is very similar to Pranam’s brother’s next, Veeram, which he says got the team of his film to consider a different name for the Kannada version at least. “But Vairam just seemed perfect for the subject, and we couldn’t think of something better, so, we decided to stick to it,” he says. Also, given that it is a bilingual, the actor shot all his scenes twice over. “It’s been a great learning experience and it happened very early on in my career, which I am grateful for. I thoroughly enjoyed working on Vairam, which we shot shot in locations across Bengaluru and Hyderbad, with the songs canned in Channapatna, Goa, etc.,” he says.