One of the reasons that make actor Vijay Deverakonda’s upcoming action drama Liger special to him is his collaboration with American former professional boxer Mike Tyson. At the trailer launch of the Hindi version of Liger that took place on Thursday in Mumbai, the Arjun Reddy (2017) actor revealed that though he was thrilled to shoot with the heavyweight champion, his mother was equally nervous.
Sharing an anecdote, Deverakonda said, “She did lots of pujas and put vibhuti (sacred ash) and kumkum (turmeric powder) on me before I left for the USA. I’m fine now and her pujas did really work (laughs).”
Charmme Kaur, one of the producers of Liger, further revealed that the actor’s mother heaved a sigh of relief only after seeing videos of them having a good time on the sets of the film. “She kept telling him, ‘It’s Mike Tyson! Be careful’. She calls him Chinnu. She called me up millions of times and told me to take care of her Chinnu. Once they started shooting, I sent her videos of how they were chilling together and laughing as if they are childhood friends,” she added.
Apart from Tyson’s presence, the trailer of the film directed by ace South director Puri Jagannadh has piqued curiosity among the audience to see a chiseled Deverakonda speaking with a stutter. The 33-year-old shared that getting the stammer right was one of the toughest things he had to grasp during the initial days of the shoot.
He elaborated, “I stammer in the film and it added a whole different layer of humour to it. My character’s visually so strong and can fight but can’t even get an ‘I love you’ from his mouth. It also made it even more interesting as to how he does the things that we wants to do and be successful in his life. It was very hard for the first two-three days. But once I got the hang of it, I had a lot of fun with it.”
Excited to be a part of a multi-language release with Liger, Deverakonda said that it was an attempt from his end to give the love back to his fans all around the country. “They gave me a lot of love for the films that I was making in Telugu, even for the ones that performed terribly. They were watching Arjun Reddy on Amazon Prime Video and the dubbed version of Dear Comrade (2019), which I don’t approve of, on YouTube in Hindi. Looking at all of that, I thought it’s about time I do something in their languages. They give me the motivation to do Liger.”
