I am glad to be making my Tamil debut with The Warriorr: Ram Pothineni

For Tollywood star Ram Pothineni, who is making his Tamil debut with Lingusamy’s bilingual The Warriorr, stepping into Kollywood is special in more ways than one. “I basically grew up in Chennai as my family had shifted to the city in 1992, when I was three years old. In fact, I was supposed to make my debut here, in Tamil films,” begins Ram.
He recalls, “I had done a short film titled Adayalam in 2002, which got me the Best Actor award at the Europe Film Festival.Following that I received offers from people like Aascar Ravichandran sir and director Shankar sir, who was at that time launching his production house with Balaji Sakthivel’s Kaadhal. But then, Telugu director-producer YVS Chowdary came down to Chennai and insisted that I act in his film and took me to Hyderabad. He is the equivalent of Sanjay Leela Bhansali in Tollywood, so I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been trying to make my Tamil debut all these years, because it is here that I learnt everything in cinema, from acting to dance, and I’m glad it’s finally happening.”
Talking about his Chennai memories, he shares, “I became a hero at 15, and when they used to ask me to talk about my childhood memories during the interviews at that time, I didn’t know what to say because most of my memories are from here, and I wasn’t sure if they might connect to me talking about Besant Nagar beach or RA Puram. But now that I'm debuting in Tamil, I can even share 10 memories each from every locality.”
Fluent in Tamil, Ram has dubbed for himself in the film, which also marks the first time he will be playing a cop. The actor recounts, “Honestly, I was wanting to do a cop role and was listening to many scripts. I’d listened to some four to five stories in just a month, but everything felt similar. So, konja naal cop stories-ae keka vendaamnu decide panniten. It was at this time that Lingu sir came and said he wanted to narrate a cop story. I only listened to him out of courtesy. But after his narration, I got the high that you feel when you watch cop movies. The story was inspired by true events and there was a soul in the script. The story behind why this character became a cop was very interesting. I connected to that very much.”
About his prep for the role, he jokingly says, “award vaangara maadhiri onnum pannala”. But he admits he wanted to get the physique right.
Unfortunately, while training for that, he suffered a slip disc on his cervical spine that put him out of action for months. “I’m a guy who even dances with fractures, but this injury was a delicate one. I couldn’t move much and it took me five months to recover. I’d completely built up my physique by the time I got the injured, so I had to lose all of it and then build it again to play this role,” he informs.
The Warriorr, produced by Srinivasaa Chitturi and presented by Pavan Kumar under Srinivasaa Silver Screen, is releasing in theatres on July 14, 2022.