Ajay Devgn was first choice for father’s role in Udaan, but Vikramaditya Motwane didn’t approach him: ‘Even today, I wonder…’

Vikramaditya Motwane revealed that he wrote Udaan with Ajay Devgn in mind for the father's role.

New Delhi | October 26, 2024 06:45 PM IST

3 min read

Vikramaditya Motwane eventually cast Ronit Roy in Udaan.

Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane toiled away for half-a-decade to get his debut film Udaan off the ground. He wrote the script in 2003, and spent several years trying to convince producers to invest in it. But he was constantly told that he’d need to cast a star in order to get the coming-of-age film made. Motwane said that he even considered approaching Ajay Devgn, but decided against it because he knew that the moment Ajay agrees, he’d become the most important aspect of the film, and not the story.

In an interview with casting director Mukesh Chhabra on Mashable, the filmmaker said, “They’d tell me to cast a star, but how could I approach someone like Shahid Kapoor? This boy needs to look innocent, he needs to look 17 years old. It’s true that I always thought of Ajay Devgn while writing the film. Even today, I wonder if I should have gone to him… I never approached him. I assumed that he’d say no. But in the back of my mind, I always knew that this was the boy’s film. The poster of this film was never the father, it was always the boy. That’s why I deliberately didn’t go in that direction.”

Also read – Vikramaditya Motwane reveals AK vs AK was originally designed to star Aamir Khan; Saif Ali Khan turned it down, Shahid Kapoor shot for it later

Motwane eventually cast Ronit Roy in the father’s role, but not without some difficulty on that front either. Ronit’s name was suggested by Anurag Kashyap, and in an interview with The Comment Section YouTube channel recently, Motwane recalled, “Ronit was staying in Anurag’s building at the time, and we’d cast another actor in the role of the father. And Anurag met Ronit one day in the lift, and he asked me, ‘Tu Ronit se mila hai kya (Have you met Ronit)?’ I said, ‘Woh TV wala Ronit? Woh Balaji wala (Ronit from those Balaji TV serials)?’ He said, ‘Mil le, banda bahut interesting hai, maybe we can cast him for the uncle’s role’.”

Motwane once also shared that he approached Akshay Kumar for one of the co-lead roles in AK vs AK, and the meeting didn’t exactly go as he’d planned. “I was like, ‘Aamir is never going to do it’, so let’s not even try. Akshay Kumar, who we did approach, and it was a very interesting meeting,” he told mid-day, and added with a laugh, “He didn’t outrightly say ‘get out of my office’, but it was close enough to being that.”

Motwane’s latest film, CTRL, was released on Netflix recently. Ajay Devgn, on the other hand, will soon be seen in the star-studded action sequel Singham Again.

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