Naseeruddin Shah prepped for this Maqbool role, backed out three months before shoot: ‘He grew his beard, dyed his hair but then…’

“When I wrote the script of Maqbool, I asked him to read it and choose a character he would want to play. He read it and said he would want to play the role of Abbaji. He started prepping, it took me a while to do the casting. He started applying mehendi to his hair, grew his beard and wanted to retain the mehendi look. But three months before the shoot, he called me and said, ‘I don’t feel like doing this role anymore,'” Bhardwaj recalled.

The filmmaker said he told him that the actor was probably “lying” because he didn’t want to do the film. But Naseeruddin Shah said his reason for not doing the role was that he wasn’t finding anything “new” to play with the character.

“He told me that he had played a don in so many films before that he wasn’t finding anything new to do with the character. ‘See, I have started growing my beard, dyed my hair but as an actor when I open the script and read, I am not finding anything new to dig in,’ he told me.”

Vishal Bhardwaj recalled that Naseeruddin Shah then offered him a “big suggestion”, which was that the roles of Pandit and Purohit, originally the witches in the play, should be played by actors who can help “underline” the importance of the parts.

“He told me that he has already had a word with Om and that they would play the parts! I was blown away, because I hadn’t thought of this casting. He is a fantastic person and such an honest actor. Then we thought now who will play Abbaji. He asked me, I said may be Pankaj and told me, ‘Kapur! No one else can do the role.’ Then we approached Pankaj ji, back then I had approached him for some other role before,” he added.

While Maqbool was Vishal Bhardwaj and Naseeruddin Shah’s first collaboration, their second was the 2006 drama Omkara, which was based on Shakespear’s Othello– a play that Naseeruddin doesn’t like, the filmmaker recalled.

“We had met at Goa film festival, and I told him that I am making Omkara. He said, ‘Arey yaar, Shakespear ke sabse kharab natak pe film bana rahe ho!’ I was obviously a bit shaken after hearing that, because Naseer sahab is our authority on this. I was carrying the script, so I asked him to read it and tell me if this is also weak, and if so, I wouldn’t make it. He read it overnight and told me, ‘Your script is very good, please make the film! I would want to play the character of Bhaisaab,” he added.

Naseeruddin Shah also stars in the filmmaker’s latest work, Charlie Chopra. The mystery thriller is based on Agatha Christie’s novel The Sittaford Mystery and also stars Wamiqa Gabbi, Priyanshu Painyuli and Neena Gupta among others.

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