Ashish Vidyarthi remembers his ‘too good to be true’ moment playing a positive role in Allu Arjun’s Varudu

Ashish Vidyarthi, who has been a regular feature in Telugu cinema since the late 1990s and 2000s, has become slightly picky about roles in the recent years. While he is most popular for his negative roles in the industry, the actor broke the mould occasionally by taking up films like Ala Modhalaindi, Nannaku Prematho, Aagadu, to name a few. His next Telugu release, Writer Padmabhushan, that hits screens on February 3, has him taking up a full-fledged comedy role for a change.

While promoting the Suhas starrer Writer Padmabhushan in Hyderabad today and Ashish was asked what he enjoyed more between a positive role and a negative role, the former had an interesting response. Remembering how he took up Allu Arjun’s Varudu to not get stereotyped amidst a series of villain roles, he said, “I was relieved when I was approached for a positive role in Varudu. However, there’s so much goodness within the film that I missed playing roles where I kill a character in the second half.”

“Whenever the director was narrating a scene to me on the set, he asked me to smile, receive a character positively, told the scene would end without any confrontation with anyone. Even in a scene with Suhasini, where we have a verbal banter, we argue only briefly and resolve the issue very quickly. All the film required from me was to sport a smile, transfer malas and not do anything. For previous films until then, I was used to having a scene with a character whom I would eventually kill later.”

“It was tough to do a role where I had to be good and not do anything else,” Ashish told, on a hilarious note. In his next, Writer Padmabhushan, Ashish plays a father in a middle-class family who enjoys simple pleasures and wants everyone to be happy. He added it was a delight to work with a young team that was eager to prove its worth. Suhas, Tina Shilparaj essay pivotal roles in the film written and directed by Shanmukha Prashanth.