In most film industries in India, casting choices involving significant age gaps between lead male and female actors have been a long-standing trend. Older male actors (60+) are often paired with younger female actors (around 30 or younger), or sometimes younger female actors are cast as mothers for much older male leads, as seen in Veera Simha Reddy (2023), where Honey Rose (32 years old) was cast as the mother of Balakrishna (63 years old).

It is relatively common for male leads, especially established stars like Balakrishna, Chiranjeevi, and Nagarjuna, to be paired with young female actors who are decades (mostly more) younger than them. There is rarely any mainstream criticism of this, and actors themselves never talk about it anyway.

Of course, this doesn't just happen in the Telugu film industry. Bollywood did it way back in Agneepath (1990), where Rohini Hattangadi (39 years old) was cast as Amitabh Bachchan's (48 years old) mother. Similarly, in the Tamil movie Arunachalam (1997), Vadivukarasi was cast as Rajinikanth's grandmother, despite being 12 years younger than him. Hollywood probably worked on it in the recent times, but they did the HUGE age gap casting too!