Hyderabad (Telangana): The climax of Pushpa: The Rise was to have originally featured actors Allu Arjun and Fahadh Fassil in the nude but the makers backed off, apprehensive of the response from the conservative Telugu audience. In a conversation with the media, director Sukumar let the secret slip.
"The climax confrontation scene is different from the one we originally shot," Sukumar revealed. Disclosing the fact that both Allu Arjun and Fahadh Fassil were supposed to appear nude in the scene, Sukumar explains that only then would the scene have appeared in its rawest form.
"Allu Arjun and Fahadh were supposed to go nude for the climax scene. But, we did not go for it because going nude is too much for the Telugu audience," the Nannaku Prematho director said.
Despite these changes, Pushpa: The Rise is considered a movie close to reality, with a couple of raw scenes.
Staying true to the subject and hero's idiosyncrasy, Sukumar had shot a scene between Rashmika and Allu Arjun which also evoked a negative reaction from the audience. Some of the viewers also had demanded the makers to take down that scene from the original print.
Interestingly, Sukumar initially wanted to make a film about Andhra Pradesh red sander smuggling case with Telugu star Mahesh Babu but the project did not materialise. The filmmaker said he later tweaked the story and roped in Allu Arjun, thus creating the two-part multilingual film -- Pushpa: The Rise and Pushpa: The Rule.
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The first part, which released on December 17 in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and Malayalam, chronicles the red sanders heist in the hills of Andhra and depicts the convoluted nexus that unfurls in the course of the narrative of a man who is taken by avarice.
"The story I narrated to Mahesh Babu was also based on red sander smuggling but that was a while ago. Once I came out of the project, I wrote a different story. I wanted the character attitude. And with Mahesh Babu, I couldn't make him cool. He is very fair. So, the backdrop was the same but the story is different," Sukumar said in an interview.
Once the Telugu filmmaker began actively working on the new script, Arjun was the only actor he had in mind. Sukumar also revealed that the second part - Pushpa: The Rule - would be more earthy and raw.
(With agency inputs)
