Rana Naidu 2 actor Rana Daggubati on handling trolls: Everyone feels the need…

Rana Naidu 2 actor Rana Daggubati talks about dealing with trolls and how he doesn't feel the need to agree with everyone's opinion

Actor Rana Daggubati, who recently returned with season 2 of the web show Rana Naidu, continues to balance his presence between the big screen and the OTT space. No stranger to long-form storytelling - having made his streaming debut in 2023 - Rana says he has developed a measured understanding of cynicism often disguised as opinion - and how to rise above it. “Art has to disturb the guys who are comfortable and create some kind of satisfaction to those who are disturbed and I believe in that,” says Rana, as he goes on to talk about online trolling.

Rana Daggubati takes on trolls and shares with negativity.

Sharing how he remains unfazed by online negativity, the 40-year-old says, “Commenting is everybody’s job and social media is a real thing. Everyone feels the need to say something and that necessarily doesn’t have to be right or wrong - it’s just someone’s opinion.”

Rana, who has worked across the Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi film industries, is well-versed in the different cultural expectations and the varied emotional responses of audiences when a film falls short of those expectations. “When you take the size of a country like ours, the cultural understanding of people is very different,” Rana says. Recalling his experiences promoting films across India, he adds, “We travel so many kilometers with a sense of what they (audience) understand, and it can be very different from how we choose to live our own lives.”

He acknowledges that in a country as vast and diverse as India, different opinions are inevitable and one should take it in their stride. “It just gives us a sense of understanding of those people because our jobs will not change. I have been doing this for 15 years and I will continue to do it,” he says before signing off, “As creators, it’s our job to say, ‘Here’s a story, let’s see how many people it reaches.’ That’s what we need to focus on.”