I badly wanted to transform myself: Ram Pothineni

Actor Ram Pothineni may be currently travelling abroad on prior commitments, but that’s not stopping him from taking in all the great things his latest film, iSmart Shankar, has been bringing him. “I am super happy, and a bit relieved too for my fans as they have been waiting for a long time to see me in this happy space,” shares the Kandireega star.

The action drama features Ram as Shankar, an eccentric guy with grey shades to him, who wears his attitude on his sleeves. The actor confesses that initially, he felt a little weird when he heard the script. “But I don’t want ‘good guy’ roles because the roles I’d been getting were all monotonous. I wanted something crazy,” explains Ram, adding that he didn’t expect whatever characters he played on screen to be good ones.

The transformers
The Nenu Sailaja star had to undergo a drastic transformation for his role in iSmart Shankar. But according to him, it was one of the best periods in his life.
“I had to change myself for the role, although I badly wanted to transform myself, too. I wanted to see a new me,” Ram explains. To play the character Shankar, he became a chain smoker, though he quit on the last day of the shoot.
“No mint, no perfume, no washing clothes, stinking, looked dirty, etc. I felt that the best way to play a character is to live it,” he adds.

Liberating moves
Ram reveals that he had mostly underplayed himself in his earlier films. “Hence, this role of Shankar was like a bomb explosion. Even my friends were totally caught off guard with my transformation,” he adds, laughing. But Shankar’s character also left its imprint in Ram. “The biggest influence the character had on my life was to shed my inhibitions. Earlier, I used to have apprehensions about how others would perceive me while doing certain things, but now I feel liberated,” elaborates Ram.

The rush
While the actor talks of how changing physically for the part was draining, he attributes his internal transformations to Puri Jagannadh, the director of iSmart Shankar. “I felt that’s my biggest take-away from the project that he could influence me mentally as well. The adrenaline rush of playing a character as energetic as Shankar was at a different level. I am enjoying its hangover even now,” shares Ram, signing off.