Manish Chaudhari is currently making waves as tough studio head Freddy Sodawallah in Netflix’s The Ba***ds Of Bollywood. The series is the directorial debut of Aryan Khan and Chaudhari is getting raves for his work. In a recent interview though, the actor singled out films that he considered exemplarary from Mohanlal’s Thudarum to Allu Arjun’s Pushpa. Here’s what he had to say about the latter’s universal appeal.

Manish Chaudhari names films which he loved

In an interview with Filmygyan, the Kohrra actor stated, “I try to watch films from all the industries, whether it’s from our country or abroad. Recently I saw Mohanlal sir’s Thudarum. I feel I hadn’t watched a film like Thudarum in a long time in any language. Thudarum is an outstanding story of a simple man who decides to do something because he is being pushed. It’s a classic tale. But how Sir has played it. How the story has been told by the director, how the writing is, how the performances are, he plays husband-wife with Shobana ma’am…”

He went on to praise other industries as well, “The work that Sudeep Sharma is doing on OTT over here, and I really believe that the work that Aryan has done on The Ba***ds of Bollywood, the work that the Telugu industry did with Pushpa, the first one. I thought the first Pushpa was the one and, I don’t know about only, genuine pan-India film. And the reason why it was a genuine pan-India film, I really believe this, is because they never thought it would be.”

“They weren’t making a pan-India film. It was rooted. It talked to Hindi audiences on the Eastern side of our country in a way that Hindi films have not talked to them over the last 10 years. How did that happen? Because it was rooted. Sukumar Sir never thought I’m going to make a project for consumption for Hindi audiences as well. I can guarantee you that,” the actor added.

“I haven’t seen Kantara yet. I really want to. I’m sure that would be the one from the Kannada world. From Hindi, I actually like the smaller films better. I liked a film called Soni by Ivan Ayr very much. And I like the big-scale films like Sky Force,” Manish concluded. This year, Manish was also seen in the feature films Kingdom, Aap Jaisa Koi, and Murderbaad.