Sometimes, the roles an actor turns down define their career as much as the ones they accept. The 2014 mystery thriller Karthikeya is one such story that could have taken a completely different path. The film became a surprise blockbuster, turning Nikhil Siddhartha into a household name. Made on a modest budget of just six crores, it went on to collect more than twenty crores and earned cult status for its gripping mix of suspense, mythology, and science.
However, few know that director Chandoo Mondeti had originally narrated Karthikeya to Allari Naresh. The actor reportedly loved the script but eventually declined the offer — not because of dates or creative differences, but because of snakes. Since the story was set around a mysterious temple in Subrahmanyapuram and involved several scenes featuring snakes, Naresh, who has a strong phobia of them, decided to step away. He even admitted later in an interview that he couldn’t sit through a movie scene that involved snakes, let alone act in one.
When the film finally went ahead with Nikhil Siddhartha, it became a massive hit and marked a turning point in Telugu cinema. The movie’s success led to Karthikeya 2, which gave Nikhil pan-India recognition. Many fans still wonder how different Karthikeya might have been with Allari Naresh in the lead — it could have changed his image entirely.
Naresh, meanwhile, later proved his versatility with films like Maharshi, where his emotional performance as Ravi Shankar won wide praise and broke his “comedy-only” tag. Today, he comfortably balances both emotional and light-hearted roles — as long as they don’t involve any snakes!
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