“I’ll be sharing the screen with my father soon” – Aadi Pudipeddi - Exclusive

Aadi Pudipeddi is a young and successful actor in Tollywood, and he is the son of popular actor & dialogue king Pudipeddi Saikumar. Aadi made his acting debut in 2011 with 'Prema Kavali' and went on to bag a Filmfare award for best male debut for that film. Later he acted in successful films like 'Sukumarudu', 'Operation GoldFish', 'Crazy Fellow', 'Tees Maar Khan' and others.Now, he has come up with a new film 'Top Gear' under the direction of a debutant director, Shashikanth. Etimes has reached out to the promising actor to discuss the film, upcoming projects, and his career. Have a look at the excerpts below from the candid chit-chat.

This is a clean content-based film in the thriller genre, even families can enjoy it, and there is no vulgarity in it. All the characters are very relatable. This film will be an absolute relief for people as it is entertaining for all those who are in a party mood at the end of the year.

I enjoyed working with him, and he executed it well, he did justice to what he narrated to me. I watched the film and I specially liked the 2nd half so much. His shot-making is very neat and technically pleasing despite being a newbie, he engaged and narrated the subject also well.

Year-end is an underrated time for some reason, but if you see the dates between Christmas to New Year and even till Sankranti people outside are generally seen in a celebratory mood. Moreover, our producers right from the beginning always wanted to come around this time.

Two of these films were supposed to release during corona time, they were shot much back but due to the lockdown and all that, we had to push it to this year. Several small films found it difficult to release as big films themselves were finding it tough to release during the covid. And of course, it is a good year for me as an actor. I never planned it to have 5 releases, it just happened.


We are planning it now, there has always been this thought to make a film together, very recently we heard a good script, so, it will happen soon. Once 'Top Gear' is released and everything is settled, we’ll work on it.

Tollywood has always been my first preference as people here gave me enough love to stay and survive, but this doesn’t mean I don’t want to explore other languages. It is just the time and right script all I was waiting for. Now, I’m doing that as well, I got one good opportunity in Tamil recently called ‘Jungle’, which is a bi-lingual movie, and I’m filming it now. Therefore, you can say I’m making my Tamil debut now.

Maybe people are expecting bigger canvas films from me. But as far as I know, I'm doing good at what I'm doing. If you see my ‘Crazy Fellow’ that was praised for its commercial elements and entertainer it is, despite it being released amid the ‘Kantara’ craze.
I'm even trying all sorts of genres. If you see the five films released this year all are different to each other in one or the other way. And maybe a couple of directors might have not shown me as they promised, but there stood enough others including the newbie directors who came up with good subjects.
However, as you said I know my strengths and even I’m waiting for such a big break called Blockbuster hit and hoping that it will happen next year in 2023.


Yes, there are 2-3 films that happened like that, I don’t want to name them, but I really can’t sign every film that comes to me and if that didn’t interest me. I may be right or wrong in guessing its verdict, but that’s how one will learn.
I get 4-5 calls every day asking me to listen to their scripts and sign a film. I can only sign such films that I feel will suit me and do me some good.
There are enough reasons for a few films to not do well such as not releasing at the right time, failing during script to visual transition, and things like that. And if 4-5 films continuously don’t do well you’ll become very conscious in selecting your other scripts fearing you’ll disconnect from the audience.
However, after ‘Crazy Fellow’, I’m getting the love that I got during my ‘Prema Kavali’ time. I may not be doing films like ‘Baahubali’ and ‘RRR’ immediately from now, but I’m walking steadily, expecting that the right things will happen if we keep working. So, maybe one big hit should happen and hope and work for that.

I did something like that with ‘Samanthakamani’, you know how many actors are in it, and not many have approached me with such content again. However, if something extraordinary comes, then I’ll not hesitate to do it. I want to do all kinds of movies and there is nothing like, I don't want to do these kinds of films.

They love many of my films, including ‘Prema Kavali’, ‘Samanthakamani’, and 'Operation GoldFish'. I personally liked ‘Sukumarudu’, and 'Crazy Fellow'. There is this film called ‘Garam’ which got me good applause. Again we have this ‘Chuttalabbayi’ by Veerabhadram Chowdhary, There are at least 10-12 movies that they are proud of.

My father doesn’t interfere with my story narration meetings, however, if I feel like getting his feedback then I'll make him listen to it, and once he is okay with it, then will do it for sure. There are a few scripts like ‘Crazy Fellow’ I made my wife listen to. If something I get excited about myself then I will not hesitate to sign it, but if I need an opinion or someone's review, then I’ll make sure they listen to it.

No big reason for it, I used to be very shy in my beginning days. I need time to talk and mingle with others, whereas now I started opening up, I have recently participated in the USA tournament. This shyness also stopped me from attending parties, award functions, and events like that, now I started communicating.


One thing here is luck and time play a major role, you’ll only be remembered as long as your film is successful. You may be good at something but if things don’t work for some reason you’ll reach nowhere. But if it gets clicked at the right time with the right people no one can stop you from growing to any length.
But one thing we should be honest about is our hard work and continuous striving for success.
If you see there are lots of actors who play lead roles in our industry and we only talk about 10-11 people all the time, but there are around 80 other actors in the Industry and they do good work too. So, films are a package here, everything should fall in place and also we should not hesitate to say ‘NO’ in this industry, if not they’ll convince you as per their needs, so if you don’t want to do something you should be wise enough to say ‘NO’ directly.

A lot of new projects are in the pipeline, they’ll be new genres and new content in the offering, and a lot of new opportunities are knocking on my door now. I’m very happy about that.
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