'I finally got a break from love stories'

After doing films like Dilwala and Tirupati Express, actor Sumanth Shailendra says that he was flooded with offers for romantic flicks. “I had so many story narrations, but they all seemed the same and just did not excite me. That’s when director Mohan Gowda Bettanagere came to me with his film. What appealed to me at first was the way he told me the story —Mohan was teary-eyed and very emotional as he narrated scene after scene.While I didn’t quite understand at first why he was so invested in this story, he later explained to me that it was his family’s tale. Mohan is the brother of Bettanagere don Shankara, who was the arch rival of his cousin Seena,” explains Sumanth.
Mohan offered the actor the role of Seena, who was killed in a police encounter a few years ago. “Even though I loved the story, after the narration, I told the director that I would revert about whether I would do the film or not,” says Sumanth.
Sumanth adds, “Over the next few days, I read up on the rivalry between Seena and Shankara and I realized just how powerful these two were at one point of time. The prospect of playing one of these men seemed exciting and challenging.” Getting into character, says Sumanth, was not easy. The actor had to change the way he spoke, walked and generally carried himself around. Shooting in actual locations near Nelamangala was also tough. “In the areas that were strongholds of the dons, we faced opposition from people loyal to either set, as they thought the other was being sidelined in our film. My character has a heroine, Akshay, who plays Shankara, doesn’t and that was questioned. For another sequence, we needed to shoot in a jail, but did not get permission anywhere. So we had to put up a set. However, on the day of the shoot, a police officer stopped us, as he thought that shooting a film about these dons could incite violence in the area. He relented only after every member of the team gave him written undertakings that we were responsible for our own safety while shooting there,” explains Sumanth.
But wouldn’t he be glorifying violence in playing a real-life gangster who has committed multiple murders? “Films are meant to entertain, and not preach. This film is based on a real-life story that involved a lot of violence and there’s no way to avoid that. We are not glorifying violence, but giving audiences an account of what transpired. Frankly, if we were to tell the entire story, we’d need to make four films. This one will focus on my character’s life. A sequel has been planned to bring Shankara’s story to the screen,” he says, adding that the film has had over 100 censor-suggested cuts, which made it eligible for a U/A certification. Bettanagere took nearly one and a half years to be made, during which Sumanth shuttled between the sets of two other films as well, which required him to take breaks to get his look right for each of these projects. “There were some other delays, including an objection from Seena’s mother, as she feared that the onscreen representation of her late son may not be right. Mohan managed to convince her that that would not be the case,” he says.