Exclusive/ HanuMan Actor Teja Sajja Clarifies His Star Kid Comment: Struggled For 6 Years To Make A Comeback...

The massive box office success of the desi superhero film HanuMan catapulted Teja Sajja to overnight fame. The 28-year-old, who made his debut as a child actor with the 1998 film Choodalani Vundi and primarily worked in Telugu films, is being hailed as the next pan-India star from Tollywood after Prabhas, Allu Arjun, Jr NTR and Ram Charan.

Post HanuMan's success, Republic caught up with the actor and spoke to him about varied topics including his controversial statement on star kids.

When Teja Sajja's Ability To Shoulder A Film Of Massive Scale Was Questioned

A few days before HanuMan's release, during a media interaction, a journalist had questioned Teja Sajja's ability to shoulder a film of massive scale. In a prompt response, Sajja had said, "I mean no disrespect to anyone but would you ask a  star kid the same question? No one asks a second-generation actor from a film family if they can handle big films when they're debuting films bigger than mine."

Subsequently, his statement went viral online. Now, during his interview with Republic, Sajja clarified his comment and said that his intention was to make them understand that they should not take anybody's work for granted.

The HanuMan actor elaborated, "I have been here since I was two and a half years old. It wasn't easy for me to get back into the industry after growing up. I started doing my audition and going around offices in 2014. It took me 6 years to get back into films with Samantha Ruth Prabhu's Oh Baby. In that film too, I wasn't the main lead. I was one of the characters in the film. So there's a long journey and a lot of struggles that went behind it all."

A Lot Of Patience Went Behind HanuMan Making: Teja Sajja

He added, "And today, after giving around two and a half years of my life to 1 film. I have sacrificed a lot, I didn't do even a single film during this time that was because of the confidence that I had in this film (HanuMan). Also, I didn't want to affect HanuMan in any way with my image by doing other films. If I wanted to, I could have done films. Anyway, in the Telugu film industry, young actors do at least 2-3 films per year. If I wanted to, I could have done at least 6 films in these two and a half years and made a lot of money too. But, I wanted to stay loyal to this film (HanuMan)."

Answering why he said what he said about star kids, Teja Sajja told Republic, "I wanted to give my 100% to this film. I didn't want to do anything else. After doing all this and getting many injuries during the shoot in the last two and a half years and the patience that went behind this film, if you ask me if are you suitable for this big film, I didn't understand how to answer this question in any other way. I said, 'would you ask this same question to a second-generation actor in case he was doing a much bigger film than this film for his debut?' My point was don't take anybody's hard work for granted. That's all I wanted to say there."

"They should know this film looks this big because we are part of it. If a star kid would have been part of this film then it would have been just like any other film. The surprise factor itself is we doing this. The very basic thing is that just because Prasanth Varma and I have made this film, it is looking surprising to you," he concluded.