Exclusive | Neil Nitin Mukesh refused Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, said Bollywood didn’t want him: ‘He’s a singer’s son, can he act?’

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Neil further added, “Also, I came from a lot of insecurities where people were not wanting to back me as an actor, they weren’t wanting to give me a chance to showcase my talent. A lot of people would say, because you are a chocolate boy, and good looking, you want to be an actor, but that wasn’t the case, so I felt very insecure about that. The trend at that time was that debuts were happening with love stories, Ranbir Kapoor, Harman Baweja, and Jackky Bhagnani – all were debuting around the same time. That time debuts would happen once in five or three years, but this time there were multiple debuts happening in one year. So, I had to stand out. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na was an amazing script; I had also auditioned for it. But somewhere, Abbas Tyrewala realized that I was not putting my best foot forward.”

Neil Nitin Mukesh also spoke about working with Sreeram Raghavan on Johnny Gaddar. He shared, “I am not claiming that I was the first choice for Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na; the film was given to me to read and see if I would do it or not. I had only one choice, and there were also questions like, he is not an actor’s son, but a singer’s son, so would I be able to act? To put an end to this question, I wanted a role that would shut people up and establish me as an actor. I thought Johnny Gaddar would be that film since it had five renowned actors. So I thought that was the right debut film. The audition was just one day, but then Sreeram Raghavan trained me for 6-7 months after that. It was a massive workshop. He made me unlearn everything; it was like everything you had in your mind about being Mukeshji’s grandson or that you are already a star, that notion had to be removed. It was his process to get me to ground zero, and it was outstanding.”

 

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“I give all credit to Sreeram, who taught me about filmmaking and to be humble about my career. I miss working with him. He is a father figure for me. After Johnny Gaddar, a lot of filmmakers took notice of me. I worked with so many national award-winning directors after that; they said I was the guy who was challenging himself, breaking norms. Unfortunately, people evaluate your work with box office success or failure. While I am still passionate about working and keep reinventing myself, some people think that his one film didn’t work, his career is over. We celebrate someone’s failure more than their success. No one can boast the kind of filmography I have or the filmmakers I have worked with, in all modesty, now it’s like I have to say it. Khudka dhindora peetna pad raha hai ab (I have to keep tomtomming my work now), because until you do that, no one will notice you,” Neil added.

On the work front, Neil was last seen in the web series Hai Junoon on Jio Hotstar.