Hansal Mehta says Shahid’s producer refused to invest money in Rajkummar Rao; told him ‘He’s good, but I’m not funding it’

He continued, “And in that process, Mukesh Chabbra, Anurag (Kashyap), just threw Rajkummar, my way. They kept saying that meet Rajkummar. I said ‘I can’t meet him. What will I do with him?’. There was no money. The producer said, ‘Anurag is going to send Rajkummar to you. I’m not funding it. I’m not putting money in for Rajkummar’. He was very new. He had just done Love, Sex Aur Dhokha.”

Mehta recalled that Anurag and Mukesh kept pushing for Rao and told him to meet the actor once. They said, “You meet him, have chai with him.” The filmmaker agreed and found him standing right outside his office. “They said have chai with him right now, he’s standing outside your office. He walks in, and in half an hour, I mean, there was something. I felt the right energy. I felt I connected to him and I saw honesty and hunger. He said he wanted to prove it. Shahid was a dream role and he recognised that,” the director remembered. He added that Rao, unlike other stars, put his character before anything else. 

Though Mehta liked him, he told him convincing the producer will be a bit of a challenge. Before meeting the producer, he made a poster of Shahid with Rao. After looking at the poster, the producer said, “Poster is cool, but who is this fellow?” That is when Mehta asked him to watch Rao’s then-upcoming film Ragini MMS, which convinced him about Rao’s acting skills.

Released in 2013, Shahid tells the true story of Shahid Azmi, a human rights lawyer and activist who dedicated his life to fighting for justice. The film received the National Film Awards for Best Actor and Best Director.