There was a time when Pawan Kalyan was second to none when it came to judging scripts. His sense of comedy was unique. The 'Sekuntalakkayya' track in 'Thammudu' had the audience in splits when the film released in 1999.

Recalling those days, director Arun Prasad says, "Pawan was so fond of the 'Sekuntalakkayya' scene that, after I narrated it to him, he would ask about it every day. Nobody understood why he was so obsessed about shooting for that particular scene. Only after the movie released and the scene received a phenomenal response did we understand why Pawan had been mad about it."

Interestingly, when Arun Prasad met Pawan for the first time, he didn't know what to narrate. "I had nothing in mind because I was not mentally prepared. I just started talking with him and then came up with a storyline that had similarities with 'Toli Prema'. Pawan later happened to accept 'Toli Prema' and didn't want to do a similar story again. Months later, he asked me to develop a script based on the 1992 Hindi film 'Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar'. That's how 'Thammudu' happened," the director says in an interview.