Popular actress Samantha Ruth Prabhu, 38, surprised her fans after tying the knot with filmmaker Raj Nidimoru, 50, in a hush-hush ceremony, on Monday, December 1, at Linga Bhairavi Temple inside Isha Yoga Centre, Coimbatore. The rumours of the intimate wedding were rife on social media since Sunday night. On Monday afternoon, the actress put an end to all the speculations with a beautiful wedding post on Instagram, showing glimpses from the simple ceremony.
Rumours about the couple dating gathered steam in February this year, when the actress posted multiple pictures alongside Raj, while cheering for her team Chennai Super Champs in the World Pickleball League, on Instagram. While there was no official confirmation from either of them, there were reports that the couple had been looking for a house for the past few months. The couple met on the sets of The Family Man Season 2, where Samantha starred as an antagonist. The actress also starred in Citadel: Honey Bunny (2024), helmed by Raj & DK.
Who is Raj Nidimoru?
Raj Nidimoru, one half of the popular filmmaker duo Raj and DK, who directed Manoj Bajpayee’s The Family Man, has made rapid strides in his career alongside DK or Krishna Dasarakothapalli, working on a series of out-of-the-box movies and web series.
Hailing from Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, Raj started off as a software engineer in USA, but his love for cinema made him take the huge leap. Feeling stagnant in his job, Raj’s creative side took over, as he simultaneously worked on scripts.
Raj met DK met while graduating from SVU College of Engineering, in Andhra Pradesh and both of them worked in USA, based in Detroit and Minneapolis respectively.
The two shared deep love for cinema which they harboured secretly while working as software engineers in US. Despite doing well in their career, they were becoming restless and their regular jobs made for feel suffocated.
“At our jobs, we were excessively making use of ‘Alt + Tab’. If there was a big programme that we were working on, we’d do that, but as soon as nobody was around, ‘Alt + Tab’, our short-cut to switch tabs and start working on our scripts,” Nidimoru told Forbes.
“We had this ‘keeda’ of doing something in the world of cinema. We would call each other up to discuss what we can do and we decided to write a script,” he added.
They soon moved to Mumbai, learning through trial and error, with no contacts and backing.
“It was a step-by-step learning process for us, but it was very exciting,” Nidimoru told Forbes. “It was difficult for us to find Indian actors, so we were also acting ourselves. Everything from writing, shooting, acting, and editing, we were doing ourselves.”
Raj & DK’s prominent work
Their first feature film 99 released in 2009, and the duo soon made their mark with films like Shor in the City (2011), Go Goa Gone (2013), and Stree (2018). They also jumped onto the OTT bandwagon and directed The Family Man and Farzi on Amazon Prime Video and Guns & Gulaabs on Netflix, adding to their countrywide fanbase.
“No one taught anyone how to make a web series, we just jumped from movies to series directly,” says Nidimoru.
Second marriage for both Samantha and Raj
Like Samantha Ruth Prabhu, this is the second marriage for Raj Nidimoru. The director got married to Rang De Basanti assistant director Shhyamali De in 2015, but the duo divorced in 2022. The couple has a daughter together.
Samantha was previously married to actor Naga Chaitanya. The duo got married in 2017 and got divorced in 2021. Naga Chaitanya married again to Shobhita Dhulipala in December 2024.
