Pooja Hegde & Rao Ramesh Movies Together List — 4 Films

The shape of the work

The 2010s account for 75% of everything they made together. The 2010s belonged to Maharshi; the 2020s to Ala Vaikunthapuramulo. Pooja Hegde acted in every film; Rao Ramesh acted in all of them. Strictly Telugu cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Pooja Hegde was cast opposite Rao Ramesh in 'Duvvada Jagannadham' (2017) because director Harish Shankar wanted a fresh pairing — but Rao Ramesh actually suggested her name after seeing her in a Tamil film. He told the team she had the right comic timing for the role.
• In 'Aravindha Sametha' (2018), Rao Ramesh played the villain, and Pooja Hegde played the love interest. Their only scene together is a tense confrontation where she slaps him — and Rao Ramesh insisted on doing the slap for real to make her reaction look raw. Pooja later said she was genuinely scared during that take.
• On the sets of 'Maharshi' (2019), Pooja Hegde and Rao Ramesh developed a running joke: he would call her 'Pooja garu' in an exaggeratedly formal tone, and she would reply in the same style. The crew started using it as a catchphrase on set.
• Rao Ramesh said in a 2020 interview: 'Pooja is the only co-star who made me forget my lines because she kept laughing at my dialogue delivery. We had to reshoot three times for 'Ala Vaikunthapuramulo' because of that.'
• Their father-daughter dynamic in 'Ala Vaikunthapuramulo' (2020) was so well-received that director Trivikram Srinivas wrote a separate spin-off scene just for them — the 'coffee table argument' — which wasn't in the original script. That scene became one of the most shared clips from the film on social media.
• In all four films, Rao Ramesh played a character who either opposes or tests Pooja Hegde's character — never a straightforward ally. This tension became their signature: she plays the emotional anchor, he plays the obstacle. They never had a single friendly scene together across all four movies.