‘Manoj Bajpayee was very badly behaved on set, everyone used to run away from him’: Hansal Mehta on actor’s ‘mood swings’ during Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar shoot

Director Hansal Mehta said that Manoj Bajpayee has 'major mood swings', as he recalled the difficulties he experienced with the actor when they worked together on the film Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!!.

Manoj Bajpayee and Hansal Mehta worked on the acclaimed drama Aligarh.

Director Hansal Mehta, who worked with Manoj Bajpayee on the little-seen 2000 comedy drama Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!!, said that the actor was very difficult to work with. In an interview, Hansal said that when he mentions it to Manoj now, the actor brushes it off, saying that he was very young at the time. “But I was young too, I didn’t know what was happening either,” Hansal said.

Appearing on a year-end roundtable organised by Cinema Express, Hansal said that he enjoys working with people he gets along with, and that an actor needn’t be effusive to make an impression on him. Rajkumar Rao, for instance, was thrust upon him by director Anurag Kashyap and casting director Mukesh Chhabra, and now they’ve worked together on six projects. “It’s about the connection that you feel. Manoj has major mood swings. We made Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! in 2000, and he was a pain in that film,” he said.

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Hansal recalled, “But at heart, he’s a nice guy. He’s not a bad person. You get that vibe. When we were working together, I used to get very irritated. I would ask, ‘Manoj, why are you behaving like this?’ That was the time when Manoj would take the character and just go. I don’t know how he decided that the character should be irritable, but he thrust it on everyone. Everyone used to run away from him. Saurabh (Shukla) used to be like, ‘I went to speak to him and he was mean. What’s wrong with him?'”

Also read – ‘I was clinically dead’: Shreyas Talpade opens up about near-fatal heart attack, was told he kept smiling and asking wife for forgiveness

Saurabh Shukla and Manoj famously collaborated on the seminal crime drama Satya, which catapulted the actor to great fame. He went on to work with Hansal on the acclaimed drama Aligarh, which Hansal described as the film he’s most fond of. Manoj will next be seen in the black comedy series Killer Soup, while Hansal is gearing up for the release of The Buckingham Murders.

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