‘This Telugu detective will go on to become iconic’

After cracking the audience up with numerous viral videos as the ‘honest groom’ in Honest Indian Weddings, the ‘frustrated techie’ in Frustrated IT Employee or the engineering student who’s irked with the world’s English obsession in The Truth of Engineering, Naveen Polishetty is all set to make his debut as a Tollywood ‘hero’, with Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya. The actor plays a detective who believes he’s more famous than he actually is.Confident that this character has what it takes to become iconic, Naveen says, “This is an once-in-a-lifetime debut. Honestly, how often does one get to play a character like this?” Apparently, director Swaroop RSJ’s narration was so intriguing that he was hooked from the word go. “When he told the name of the film, I even joked that we would have to release two posters just to fit the whole name in. But, the fact that the protagonist was a detective made me curious. When I was told that he runs a detective agency called FBI from a vegetable market in Nellore, it just cinched it for me.” Prepping for the part was really difficult though, says Naveen. “I was part of Swaroop’s writing team for a year just so I could understand the character better. By the end of it, I got a hang of how he would react to everything. For the past two years, the line between the real me and the character I play has been blurring. I have become more observant, noticing little details I didn’t before, much like a detective would,” says Naveen, who admits that making his debut as a lead actor is a dream come true. “Acting has been a childhood dream. In fact, viral videos happened accidentally when I was in Mumbai auditioning for movie roles. But they did open new doors for me. I went from being an aspiring actor to someone everyone knew thanks to my videos,” says the actor, who is excited to see how the audience receives the film.
Produced by Rahul Yadav Nakka under Swadharm Entertainment, Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya releases today.