I Will Shut My Mouth and Let My Work Speak: Vijay Devarakonda On The Failure of Liger

Directed by Shiva Nirvana (of Tuck Jagadish fame), the romantic film Kushi will see Vijay Devarakonda and Samantha Ruth Prabhu appearing together after an extended cameo in Nag Ashwin’s Mahanati. The makers recently released the film’s trailer at a launch event.

During the Q&A session, lead actor Vijay Devarakonda was asked how he dealt with failure. The actor said, “I think about what went wrong. Failures are really important. It’s the only way I can learn. I don’t have an institution around me that can make my decisions for me, I make my own decisions.”

Devarakonda’s last film was the Puri Jagannadh directorial Liger. Amidst huge expectations, the Hindi-Telugu bilingual sports film opened to extremely negative reviews and was a dud at the box office. Addressing the failure of Liger, Devarakonda said, “I think I needed a failure like Liger. I have fond memories of the project and I really liked working on it. The thing about the film that upset me was that I didn’t see it. When Vijay Devarakonda says something, he makes it happen and I said it would be a hit. But when it didn’t turn out to be a success, I told myself, ‘How the hell did you not see it, you dumb idiot?’”.

Regarding the aftermath of the film and how he sees it, the actor said, “I am somebody who speaks my mind. But I have decided that for the next three films, I am going to shut my mouth and let my work speak. This is my self-inflicted punishment because I embarrassed myself.”

After Kushi, the actor will be seen in a collaboration with Jersey director Gowtham Tinnanuri and will be reuniting with his Geetha Govindam director Parasuram.