‘I needed people to respect me as an actor’: Akhil Akkineni on why Lenin had to work

7 min readHyderabadUpdated: Jul 13, 2026 07:57 PM IST

Akhil Akkineni on the success of Lenin.

For Akhil Akkineni, the success of Lenin was never about a box office number. It is the end of a wait that lasted over three years and the beginning of something he has been chasing since his debut in 2015.

“The success of Lenin felt like a release of a lot of emotions. Also most importantly, I’m very happy for my fans and everyone who wanted this to happen,” Akhil said in an interview with SCREEN after the film crossed Rs 61 crore India net in its opening weekend. “The redemption for them is more,” he added.

Akhil Akkineni said the decision to pick a rural action drama set in Rayalaseema was not accidental. It came from a clear realisation that his previous choices had taken him in the wrong direction. “I had a very clear criteria, that with my next film, I want to connect to the roots. I want to be very rooted, very grounded in terms of character, in terms of the way I look, in terms of relatability,” he said, adding, “I felt the urban scripts that we were choosing were taking me very far away. And I felt it was really needed to first connect to where we came from, where my grandfather, where my father, where the roots are from.”

He also acknowledged that the timing worked in Lenin’s favour. “The flavour of the moment also is these very rooted experiences in cinema are working. People are appreciating it because I think the urban setup has been overdone,” he said. But beyond the market calculation, there was a personal need driving the choice. “Most importantly, I wanted an opportunity to at least impress with my performance. I needed people to respect me as an actor, and I felt Lenin would do that for me.”

The transformation from the urban, Gen-Z image of his earlier films to a village-rooted character required significant preparation. Akhil Akkineni explained that he and director Murali Kishor Abburu worked together for about two months before filming began, with workshops, trial shoots and detailed prep on the Rayalaseema dialect. “First things first, I had to completely transform. The look, the skin colour, the body language. We did some workshops, we did some trial and error. All of that work gave me clarity before I went on to set. I wasn’t trying to find the character when I went on to set. I sort of had an idea of how I’m going to act way before the film started,” he said.

Akhil Akkineni as Lenin

The most demanding stretch of the shoot, Akhil said was the pre-climax and climax block, which took seven to eight days to film. He described the pre-climax, a heavy dramatic sequence that reveals the darker side of his character, as physically and mentally exhausting. “I somewhere knew I had it in me, but when you’re actually doing it, it is physically and mentally very draining. That whole week, I was just not there in my head after the shoot. It’s extremely draining emotionally because I try to find some way to method act and feel it. The tears, the whole sequence is very draining and painful,” he said.

SPOILER ALERT!

The climax, which has been one of the most discussed elements of the film, presented its own challenge. Akhil Akkineni’s character is revealed to have lost his vision, and the actor had to find a balance between action and emotion while playing a man who has trained himself to function as though he can still see. “There were many takes that we redid because of the eyes. We tried to find a balance where someone who has lost his vision has trained himself to function like he has his vision. It was a combination of filmmaking and acting that had to come together to make that sequence work. And when we saw the climax, we knew it was working. I was just like, yes, I think we got it.”

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When asked about the family’s reaction, Akhil said the response was emotional. “Happy tears, definitely. The whole family was really rooting for this one. They knew it was a special film. All my dad’s efforts, my efforts, the team’s efforts. Everyone just put a lot of unnecessary time into it. They did a lot more than was required. Everyone’s hard work paid off, so yes, it was an emotional moment,” he said.

Akhil Akkineni also addressed the script development process, saying the story was not originally written for him. “When the script came to us, it wasn’t written for me. I had heard it, loved it, but then the director started to mould it slightly in terms of character, what he felt would be better suited for me to carry it,” he explained. He estimated that around 10 percent of the script was changed after the production house came on board, with adjustments made to the heroine’s character and a streamlining of the ensemble to ensure the drama translated effectively from page to screen.

Also Read: Lenin box office day 3: Akhil Akkineni film earns Rs 61 cr; RGV says ‘best actor in family’

On the casting change that saw Sreeleela replaced by Bhagyashri Borse as the female lead, Akhil kept it brief. “It was purely a date issue. Her workload piled up for her Hindi movies. The producers had to take a call saying that we are not going to get the dates that we required in the near foreseeable future. We very amicably moved on. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

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Looking ahead, Akhil Akkineni said the success of Lenin has not changed his approach but sharpened it. He wants the next phase of his career to be defined by performances that leave a mark. “I am looking for an opportunity to dig deeper and deeper as an actor. I need my film to challenge me. I don’t want to do anything surface level, at least not for the next few years.”

The goal, he said, is to build a reputation that makes audiences trust his name before they even see a trailer. “I want to reach a point where people are confident that if Akhil Akkineni is releasing a film, he is going to give them a very unique cinematic experience. That’s the reputation I would like to achieve. Even if I can build that film by film, small step at a time, I think then I would have reached my goal. The next three, four, five films, I really want to achieve that,” he concluded.