Rana Naidu: 'He was like my cool older brother, never the uncle,' says Rana Daggubati about co-star Venkatesh

For Rana Daggubati, the experience of being part of Rana Naidu has surely been both novel and interesting. Novel because he has got the opportunity to dabble in web content and a longer narrative for the first time in his career and as a result, add another accomplishment to his growing repertoire. The show might be an adaptation of the hit series Ray Donavan but by the looks of it, the makers have gone to great lengths to lend it a solid desi touch and Rana, too, looks quite in his element as the titular character.

And interesting because Rana Naidu, the show, allows him to work alongside his uncle Venkatesh Daggubati for the very first time and that too under slightly unconventional circumstances. By his own admission, he did want their maiden collaboration to be 'cliched' or formulaic and despite all the opportunities they had over the years, the two decided on waiting it out until the right project came along. But Rana Naidu demanded them to be the fiercest foes on screen and go against the grain of the bonhomie cinema that they are expected to make back home, in Telugu cinema. Rana says that hurling abuses at his uncle was probably the toughest thing he has had to do in his career so far.

But what is the real dynamic of their relationship? Is there too much reverence for Venkatesh from Rana's end? Or they are quite chummy with one another?

"He [Venkatesh] is like that cooler older brother, it's not that uncle vibe. Growing up, it was his clothes that I wore, his car after he had used was what I used. It was that kind of energy. And we didn't want to do anything cliched - usually what happens is when you are related, there is some father-son kind of cliched drama that happens and I said we shouldn't do that to begin with. And then, that's it, this is what we found - a father who is trying to kill his son and a son who is trying to kill his father," said Rana in his fun-filled conversation with comic and actor Cyrus Broacha on the Cyrus Says podcast.

In the same conversation, Rana Daggubati would also discuss the simmering intensity on the sets of Rana Naidu and the process of executing action/fight sequences that also included Venkatesh Daggubati. "I was 300 times more cautious," he said.

Rana Naidu also stars Surveen Chawla, Sushanth Singh, Abhishek Banerjee, Ashish Vidyarthi and others. The show debuts on Netflix on March 10th.