A few days ago, actor Rana Daggubati had tweeted images of a set being constructed on the studio floor adjacent to his office in Ramanaidu Studios. This space is where Season 2 of his television show No.1 Yaari will unfold. The first episode, featuring actor Vijay Deverakonda and director Nag Ashwin, will air this Sunday on Gemini TV at 8.30 p.m. and also be available on Viu app. In an interview with The Hindu, Rana stated that he felt the show needed to acquire a more informal hue, “I see this new set-up as an extension of my personal space where I invite well known people who are friends. There will be clippings where they walk through my personal space in the studio before settling down for the interactive show. This will make them feel more relaxed than being on a typical set.” Season 2 will have 13 episodes and feature a few personalities from Season 1 along with new names. “For Season 1, I shot with Vijay Deverakonda and Tharun Bhascker. Now Vijay is a bigger star, the dynamics have changed,” reasons Rana. Director Nag Ashwin who worked with Vijay in Yevade Subramaniam and Mahanati is also Rana’s childhood friend. “We studied together from grade one in Hyderabad Public School. Nagi (Nag Ashwin) was also the assistant director when I began my acting career in Shekhar Kammula’s Leader,” adds Rana. He says the concept of No.1 Yaari is to celebrate friendship that exists off-screen and make it into an entertaining television show. Season 2 will tweak the format, keeping the fun quotient intact. “Unlike game shows, we’re looking at a personal show that will appeal to people watching us during their family time on Sunday evening. And I enjoy being myself on television, where I am not enacting a character,” says Rana. The most popular episode in Season 1, he mentions, was the one that featured actor Balakrishna and director Puri Jagannadh and another featuring actors Sumanth and Naga Chaitanya. In the break between Season 1 and Season 2, Rana shot for the trilingual Haathi Mere Saathi — “for three months I was in the jungles of Thailand shooting with elephants” — before joining the crew of NTR biopic to portray the part of Chandrababu Naidu. The actor shed his Hulk-like Baahubali look for these films. “For the NTR biopic I went all out to look lean like Naidu. I couldn’t have looked like Bhallaladeva for this biopic.” The actor who presented and distributed the independent film C/O Kancharapalem recently, has also established a LIT team that’s developing content for television, web series and cinema. On the thought process behind bringing together writers, he avers, “Literature used to be the core, based on which cinema was once being made. Then filmmaking became a deal; you take an advance and do a film for somebody. This method hasn’t worked for me and now we see the revival of content-based cinema. This pool of writers will develop stories, look into the structure of the story and screenplay. LIT will be a combination of several aspects of content.” McDowell’s No 1 Luxury Soda and Viu team up for Season 2 of No.1 Yaari with Rana, which will air on Sundays at 8.30 p.m. on Gemini TV.

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