Rana Daggubati, the lead protagonist from Haathi Mere Saathi considers himself lucky as an actor for bagging such a rare and unique onscreen character. He plays Bandev in the trilingual which will soon be hitting the theatres. As he comes closer to the release, Rana rewinds back to the days before he embarked on the Haathi Mere Saathi journey.

Recalls Rana, "Prabhu Solomon had a very clear idea on what Bandev looks like. When he came to me, it was just after Baahubali where I was a huge guy, who had just played Bhallaldev." But how we see Rana in Haathi Mere Sathi is a far cry from his Bhallaldev look. Rana further adds, "I did an extravagant look test for HMS. And Prabu sir said, 'no, this is not how Bandev looks, or somebody who's lived in the jungle forever looks. He can't be so big. I need you to start looking different.' For the next six months, he didn't do a look test, we were only prepping and doing recce. He kept asking me to grow my hair and beard, lose some weight, become lean and agile because he wanted me to move much faster. All of that got done and the day we landed in Thailand, he gave me a week-long workshop where I was training with the elephants and had a lot of time to spend with them."