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Much before Aamir Khan‘s Bhuvan hit a six and led his village to victory in Lagaan, the team was possibly starring at a clean bowled situation– had the British actors they wanted to cast in the film not come on board.
Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker and backed by Aamir Khan, the epic sports drama–about a bunch of villagers competing against the British officers in a game of cricket– released in 2001 and emerged as an acclaimed blockbuster, even landing an Oscar nomination. The film, which was about a village’s determination to win against all odds, featured British actors like Rachel Shelley, Paul Blackthorne and John Rowe among others.
In a clip from the 2004 documentary Madness in the Desert–Satyajit Bhatkal’s documentary on the making of Lagaan–Khan and Gowariker talk about how the toughest part of the casting was to get the English actors.
“One of the most difficult aspects of the casting was the British casting,” Gowariker says in the clip, shared on the YouTube page of Netflix India. “Have you all made any film? No, this is our first film,” Khan says, laughing, as the video cuts to behind the scenes of the British actors’ audition tapes, dated July 1999.
Khan then narrates the back and forth, the question and answers that followed before the casting was locked. “Is the film in English? No, the film is in Hindi! So, you mean you want British actors for an Indian film, which is to be made in Hindi, for an Indian audience and not an international audience? I mean, what?!
“But, the moment they read the script, they suddenly looked at us from a different point of view,” Khan says. The video then cuts to Rachel Shelley, performing to The Sound of Music song “The Hills Are Alive” as the screen fades to black.
In 2021, when Lagaan had completed 20 years, Aamir Khan had opened up about Lagaan’s remake and said it “can be done”. Khan also said that he would be keen to see which actor would play Bhuvan.
“But I don’t want to make it because Ashutosh (director Ashutosh Gowariker) and I have already made it once. It’ll be boring for us to make the same film again. But if another filmmaker wants to make Lagaan, Ashutosh and I will be happy to give him or her the rights. They’ll have their own perspective.
“I don’t believe in being possessive about my films. I would like to see who will do Bhuvan better than me. I would learn something from it. It’ll be a different film, I’d like to see that, it’ll be charming,” Khan had said.
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