'Baddie' Vamsi Krishna found it hard to play a good guy

He’s played a baddie in most of his movies, but in his Kannada debut Mass Leader, Vamsi Krishna is doing things differently. The strapping young actor speaks to Bangalore Times about playing a good guy, acting in a new language and getting to work with a young, talented team in his debut film itself. Excerpts…
You have shed your baddie avatar for Mass Leader. Tell us more…
Yes, I actually play a good guy in this film.My role is that of a Kashmiri guy, who is in love with Ashika’s character in the film. There are many cute romantic scenes. It’s a soft role and is very different from what I am used to playing.
So, how hard was it?
Very. Romance was hard as I haven’t done it in a while, but it was fun. The director used to keep telling me that the baddie in me was trying to make his way out, so I had to tone it down. I guess that after playing a negative character in 30-40 movies, it was embedded in me, so it was hard to get out of that mould. But I did manage to do it eventually.
What was your Kannada debut experience like?
I have been looking for an entry into the Kannada film industry for a while now. I got a couple of offers earlier, but nothing excited me. I was very comfortable playing a bad guy, so this is something different from what I have done in Tamil and Telugu films. I met Tarun (Shivappa, the producer) and director Narasimha Murthy, and liked them as people. The story of Mass Leader is also very nice, so I thought that this was the right project to debut with. It was a great team to work with. I didn’t know the language. The funny things is that the director couldn’t speak anything but Kannada and I could speak everything else apart from Kannada.
Was communication an issue then?
Language wasn’t a barrier at all, actually. I picked up my lines very early. The team of assistant directors were well versed in Telugu, so they helped me out with the meaning of each word. Kannada and Telugu are kind of similar, so that helped as well. Shivanna (Shivarajkumar) also helped me out a lot with my lines and how to enact them. So, I picked up the language — at least, my lines — and even dubbed for the movie.