Exclusive! Priyadarshi: I consider Internet my Godfather, it has brought me from short films to wherever I'm today

Priyadarshi may be a big name to reckon with today, but he's still that person who prefers to have a dosa by a roadside bandi, cracking a joke or two with his friends sitting in a car in Jubilee Hills. Though he's very sociable and friendly with his colleagues within the industry, his world revolves around the lanes of Chanda Nagar and Saidabad, his friends from the University of Hyderabad and the books of Immanuel Kant. 

He's quite aware that his fame is a product of his humble beginnings and makes sure his foot sticks to the ground. In contrast, in his latest show Loser Season 2 on ZEE5, the actor plays an air-rifle shooter Suri Yadav who lets his success and fame eat him up and loses his identity eventually. With the show opening to rave reviews all over, a relieved Priyadarshi offers a sneak-peek into the making of Loser, and how the team behind it had become his extended family in the last few years.

I think you can safely say that you're no longer Priyadarshi, the comedian or the hero's sidekick. You no longer need to tell people that there's more to you than comedy...

I actually realised this through the many YouTube thumbnails. I used to come across titles like 'Comedian Priyadarshi funny speech' earlier but they have now changed to 'Actor Priyadarshi speech'. The shift has set in, for sure.

Did you have references within the film industry to play a character like Suri Yadav, who's corrupted by fame and the power game? There are ample stories in tinsel town where success gets to people's heads quite easily...

I would partly agree that I did have examples around me I could refer to. Right at the beginning of my career, I've had actors who've behaved with me worse than Suri Yadav of Loser Season 2. On a scale of 10, if Suri was 3, I faced people who were 8 or 9 (on 10) and now, they're nowhere to be seen. However, in an industry where there's a collective effort to make good cinema, it's hard for narcissistic people to survive here. 

The times are so different now. There's so much for the industry to choose from and no actor is indispensable. Even if an actor is not available, there are a lot of options for filmmakers and the talent pool has become vast. It's no longer a small place. The consumption of media has multiplied manifold. Though Suri Yadav's portrayal wasn't completely inspired by such people within the industry, they were reminders of whom I should not become.

What drew you to Loser initially? Was it the sports backdrop or the character or the story?

A few years ago, Prasad Nimmakayala (garu) had called me to say that there was this very interesting story, still in its early stages, that I must listen to. Abhilash Reddy came across like this very soft-spoken person and told me a story that revolved around three sportspersons. Suri, then, was a character, who couldn't become an air-rifle shooter and goes rogue, killing those people who were turning out to be the roadblocks in his career.

The story evolved with time and things changed on the writing-table. I always loved underdog tales. The reason I am in this profession is because of Chiranjeevi (garu) and the impact he has had on me. He has risen to the top with very humble beginnings and always credited the writers, directors who'd nurtured him. 

I somehow felt the protagonists in our stories had become too larger than life and became less relatable to the common man over time. In whatever stories that I have chosen, be it Mallesham or Mail or Awe and now Loser, I think I'm subconsciously drawn towards stories of underdogs. The confluence of three contrasting characters like Ruby, Suri and Wilson was very interesting for me.

How did Priyadarshi not get consumed by fame and have his feet on the ground?

I have an analogy for this. There is this popular dosa bandi in Hyderabad that all of us used to frequent in the mornings. In an age where multi-national food chains were ruling the roost, where people were hogging up pizzas and burgers, this man entered the business with his father and made sure that dosa became a rage among youngsters. He made dosa sound cool. When he began expanding and opened many branches in the city, the crowds mysteriously reduced and something was amiss in their food. I realised it was the experience - it became a pale shadow of its past.

If Priyadarshi loses his identity and forgets the very reason he's liked by people, I don't think so I would even like myself. My father was a carpenter who lost his education because of circumstances, my mother couldn't pursue her academic career despite being a gold medallist during her B.Sc. My father was wearing the same lungi while in Osmania University for over two years and we stayed in a one-bedroom apartment in Saidabad. 

Our life was about roaming in an LML Vespa, hanging around Gokul Chaat, eating curd in Jain Hotel. I was doing a few wedding videos even until Pelli Choopulu happened. The art that I seek or the stories that I want to tell comes from these surroundings, these people. If I distance myself from this milieu, this food and culture, I don't think I can become a better person/actor. 

If people call me a star or an actor today, it's all because of the people and these experiences. Even with the money I made in my first few films, I bought a Bullet and I still ride on my bike around the city and go back to Chandanagar, the streets I grew up in, walk through the empty lanes in the University of Hyderabad. My real friends don't belong to the industry.

What do you think are the challenges unique to the life of an air-rifle shooter?

Air-rifle shooting is not at all similar to athletics or other forms of sport that demand physical/mental agility. A player needs to go through a lot - from holding a gun to maintaining his focus to controlling his breath and achieving the target- and this process is not entertaining at all. The first few days of my training was about holding a gun and staring at a wall for hours - it sucks all the patience out of you.

The slightest change in your breath can make a difference of about 10 points in your game. Mental dexterity is the key here - you need to literally become the gun or the bullet or the target you need to achieve. It took about a month for me to get the nuances of the sport and my coach, Neelkanth Mane, was there all through the shoot checking if we were getting our act right. Our director, Abhilash Reddy, had the strong will that his actors should go through this regime to become what we had to play on the screen.

Loser Season 2 is the first sequel in your career. How difficult was it to revisit a character three years after shooting for the first part? Did all those years make you look at Suri any differently?

We, as a team, had become very close during the making of Loser. Our rapport extended beyond 'pack up' and we became this tiny family - believe me when I say this is not a cliche that every actor says during the promotions. Even during lockdowns, I, Komalee, Pavani, Shashank and Abhilash were only a call away from a meetup. Our families came together and we've become a gang of 15-20 people. We no longer discuss work or scripts alone and took decisions as a team. We became part of each other's lives so organically.

Stepping back to the character was like going back to an old library called Suri Yadav, feeling the smell of the book and reading it all over again. You look at it from a different perspective. It wasn't easy to play Suri again but doing good work doesn't always come from a position of comfort. We forget those things when everything comes together on the screen seamlessly.

Loser, in its first season, was this small show made on a modest budget that people ended up liking. However, with the second season, the stakes go up and there are expectations to deliver. Was there additional pressure of making Loser Season 2 work at any cost?

When I heard the story of Loser, I was quite sure that wasn't going to be just another project or an easy-watch sitcom. I didn't want to do something casual or funny when I was venturing into the web space. I know the power of the Internet. I consider the Internet my Godfather, it has taken me from short films to wherever I've come today. 

With Loser, I was told that we were venturing into a not-so-safe territory in the Telugu digital space and one couldn't be very sure of how the response would pan out. We were only four people when we had shot this scene of Suri in a snowy backdrop introspecting on what he had just achieved in the climax. Shooting amidst such challenges and limitations were quite exciting. 

We didn't have those limitations while working on the second season, say in Mumbai or Kerala. There was this indie spirit within us, we shot a few scenes on the phone in streets, elite hotels and people can't make out the difference. Despite having a bigger budget, we didn't want the setup to overwhelm us. We still wanted to retain that guerilla style of filmmaking. There was pressure to deliver, yes, but the makers trusted us more and the scale gave us the wings we needed.