Rana Daggubati explains why Telugu industry run by powerful families doesn’t get as much flak as Bollywood for nepotism

Rana Daggubati will make his digital debut opposite Venkatesh Daggubati. As the actor is busy promoting the upcoming Netflix series Rana Naidu, the actor was asked about legacy families in Hyderabad. Telugu industry is pre-dominatingly run by powerful families and very rarely do you see outsiders making it big in the industry. Interestingly, while Hindi cinema is very much criticized for nepotism, the Telugu industry doesn’t face that much flak.

When asked Rana Daggubati the reason behind it, he told Film Companion, “I moved to Hyderabad 25 years ago from Chennai, when a bunch of Telugu people moved to another place which just had rocks, and everyone was trying to build houses and making movies in those houses. That’s what the entertainment industry was. No one wanted to be a part of this. In the early days, people would come and say, ‘Sir my son has failed 10th grade, he is not going to do anything, why don’t you make him an assistant director in your movie.’ That was our world, the kind of people who wanted to come. It was looked down upon by the elite, educated world. What was there? Just families who held it. This is what we do, this is what we will do generation after generation and create that eco-system.”

Talking about the studio system and how it is the stupidest thing a person can do in the industry, he added, “That’s the love we have for art and storytelling.” Speaking of Disney, he added, “So all of these four-five companies that are there now, are families… Imagine a bunch of families fighting the global giants and still being more and more successful. There is also a simple metric, resources are too much in Mumbai but there you don’t have these resources. The resources are built there. It is own money, loaned money, you mortgage your home, land and make movies. Which is why the guts to make big stuff comes and that’s what it is. It is extremely exciting,” he said.

Rana Daggubati and Venkatesh Daggubati, come together for the very first time as the warring father and son duo in Netflix’s upcoming series Rana Naidu. An adaptation of the popular American series, Ray Donovan, Rana Naidu premieres on March 10, 2023 and is produced by Sunder Aaron and Locomotive Global and created by Karan Anshuman. The series is directed by Karan Anshuman & Suparn S Varma. Rana is an ultimate celebrity fixer who is posed with the biggest problem yet – his father, Naga!