Nagarjuna Gets ‘20% More Charged Up’ During ‘Bigg Boss Telugu’, Shares Son, Akhil Akkineni (EXCLUSIVE)

For Nagarjuna, “Bigg Boss Telugu” does not simply add another job to his schedule. It switches his brain into top gear. His son Akhil Akkineni says the actor becomes noticeably more charged up while preparing for the reality show, where keeping pace with the contestants requires constant attention.

“I guess it is because of the nature of the prep and how deep he has to dive into the show. He is thinking all the time,” Akhil tells Variety India. “But I feel he is about 20% more charged up than he usually is. His brain cells fire faster than usual. Not that they don’t the rest of the time, but with ‘Bigg Boss’ they fire one level faster.”

Nagarjuna has hosted “Bigg Boss Telugu” Season 3 onward, taking over from Jr NTR and Nani after they hosted the first two seasons. He has now fronted seven seasons of the Telugu edition, including the ninth season in 2025 and is returning for the milestone 10th season.

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That longevity has made Nagarjuna inseparable from the show’s identity, but according to his sons, the intensity he brings to it is simply an extension of his personality. “After the ‘Bigg Boss’ season is over, in the following months if he doesn’t have any other shoot, he is lost,” Naga Chaitanya says. Akhil has a more affectionate description: “He has restless feet. Very, very restless feet.”

The family has learned to live with that restlessness. Akhil recalls how he and his mother even joke about Nagarjuna’s inability to stay away from work for too long. “My mother and I joke about it all the time. She’ll call me from a long holiday and say, ‘We need to come back. He has to go back to work.’”

For Nagarjuna, the need to remain occupied is not complicated. “I think work is God’s blessing. I need to work. That’s it,” he says, adding, “Some work. If I am not acting, let me produce a film.”

The COVID-19 lockdown offered perhaps the clearest demonstration of that philosophy. With the film industry at a standstill, Nagarjuna found an unlikely way to keep his mind occupied: LEGO cars. “During COVID, there was nothing to do. Somebody told me that building LEGO cars will keep your brain sharp. I built three or four LEGO cars,” he recalls.

Akhil remembers walking out of his room and finding his father completely absorbed in the task. “So, we’d come out of our rooms, and we’d see him with this table. He would be sitting there, just staring at this LEGO, slowly building.”

It was hardly a casual hobby. “I would spend five hours a day on it,” Nagarjuna says while capturing the concentration required to survive the “Bigg Boss” environment from a different perspective. “There are 20 people there. If I let the concentration go down even a little bit, they will take over me and eat me up.”