Manish Malhotra yelled at me for saying I wore a Rs 500 saree in Satya, says Urmila Matondkar: ‘Tumne kyu bola’

In the same interview, Urmila also took a dig at critics who were obsessed with her looks and were ignoring her performance.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | Updated: January 18, 2025 05:35 PM IST

3 min read

Urmila Matondkar recalls a funny anecdote from sets of Satya. (Photo: IMDb/Manish Malhotra/Instagram)

Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya was re-released in theatres on January 17, 26 years after its original release. The occasion brought together the cast – Manoj Bajpayee, Urmila Matondkar, Makarand Deshpande, JD Chakravarthy – along with writer Anurag Kashyap and the filmmaker himself. The team gathered for an interview before a screening, where they shared several anecdotes. Urmila recalled the time when costume designer Manish Malhotra yelled at her for revealing the price of the sarees she wore in the film. “Yeh batana zaruri tha?” recalled Urmila him saying to her.

In an interview with Radio Nasha, Urmila recalled being annoyed with the critics at the time for only highlighting how glamourous she was. She shared, “I remember the scene where I go for lunch with Shefali Shah and Manoj Bajpayee… It was all quite hotchpotch there, with people trying to set up lights and camera… And I suddenly realised from their body language, which was of a couple, which has been married for 20 years… Now when and how did they figure that… there I was just sitting and completely convinced that I was sitting in front of some super talent, and now I just have to match them up and prove all those critics wrong who were only tomtoming about my glamour quotient, which incidentally is all that they could see but anyway, that’s part of past.”

She continued, “I have to mention another maverick who worked on the movie, who I got firing from, which is Manish Malhotra. After Rangeela, here we were breaking our heads and buying this cheap sarees. So this one time, during an interview someone asked me something about my looks… and I was like, ‘Yaar, why are you all so obsessed with my pout and image? I am wearing sarees worth Rs 500. Suddenly, I get a call… at that time mobiles were not common. He yelled, ‘Tumne Rs 500 ka saree kyu bola? Was it necessary to mention THAT?’ I was like, ‘Manish, that’s the whole point’. I guess he missed it. But, today, he would have been happy that it’s okay it’s made up for it.”

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In the same interview, Urmila also recalled her biggest regret. She said that she was quite happy when she realised she had to dance to a song sung by the legendary Lata Mangeshkar, but was disappointed when the makers edited the bit from the film. She said, “And one of my biggest regret is… I was in my la la land about this song, ‘Geela Geela Pani’. I was like, ‘Haaye, Lata ji ne mere liye gana gaya, Gulzar sahab ke lyrics…’ I remember calling him from the car when I heard it and cut to the song. The song got cut, I was like ‘Kill me’. Anyway, that was just a beginning.”

Reacting to her disappointment, Ram Gopal Varma said, “To clarify the Geela Geela Pani incident, some people said that song could be slowing down the first half.”

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