Ripped & Rugged

Rana ‘Bhallala’ Daggubati lays bare his life – his passion for films, filmmaking, fitness and more – in an enthralling and exclusive chat with ‘H&N’.

- Aishwarya P Vaidya

A Movie Buff Since Childhood

“My childhood revolved around movies. I wasn’t that good in studies and only watched movies with my father Suresh Babu, who enjoyed producing movies (in Telugu). In fact, my most precious memory with my grandfather renowned Telugu film producer D Rama Naidu was watching film rushes with him.

“As a kid, I must have watched ‘Star Wars’ about 200 times, and ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ 100 times. So you can safely say that I grew up on a staple of movie watching and movie making.

“Ram Charan (actor Chiranjeevi’s son) was my classmate in school and we were naughty kids - the only change now is that we are not kids anymore. We both shared a similar understanding of movies, spent our early childhood in Chennai and then moved to Hyderabad. The other thing that I remember as a kid, was that I trained in boxing. That was my earliest memory of any fitness activity.”

Learning Film Production, While In School

“In Hyderabad, film shoots were common in the basement of our house. Every day, while going to school, I used to see some or the other movie shoot in progress. The editing studio was also in the basement, and after coming back from school, I used to learn editing in the editing room with the editor. After that, my family built a recording theatre, and I learnt sound recording too. So my exposure to the technical aspects of filmmaking started really young.

“After school, I went to Chennai to study industrial photography. Since I was also good with computers, I learnt visual effects and floated a visual effects company of my own called Spirit Media. I drowned myself completely in my company. My sedentary job and erratic timings made me quite unfit, and fitness was hardly a priority then.”

Turning Producer