Amol Palekar refused to cast Nana Patekar after hearing he hit Vidhu Vinod Chopra during Parinda shoot, actor pursued him: ‘I will come to you naked, you shape me…’

However, Nana didn’t take Amol’s criticism to heart and continued to pursue the role. Explaining further, Amol said, “He kept pursuing me. This was the time when Parinda was a hit and his gritty character in the film was a hit, he was seen as the angry young man. At that time, people were also talking about how Nana beat up Vidhu Vinod Chopra during Parinda shoot. There was physical fight between them.”

Amol added, “So, it is obvious that he didn’t come close to my character. But he took it as a challenge and came to me for 10 days and did rehearsals with me. He told me, ‘I will come to you naked, you shape me how you want.’ During those 10 days of rehearsals he changed completely, his personality changed completely. And during the whole shoot we didn’t even have an argument, forget about getting into a fight.”

Vidhu Vinod Chopra had earlier opened up about his clash with Nana on the sets of Parinda on the reality show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. He recalled how a disagreement escalated into a physical altercation. He shared, “There’s a scene in the film where Nana asks if he has tears in his eyes after his wife has died… We’d been shooting all day, and it was late in the evening. Nana declared that he was too tired to continue and that he was going home. I told him, ‘Sure, you pay for the overheads then’. He started swearing at me, I swore back, and in the scuffle, I tore his kurta. The cops on set said, ‘We’re here to protect you, and you’re fighting among yourselves.’”