Naseeruddin Shah tried to sabotage Sanjeev Kumar’s casting as Ghalib, wrote a damaging letter to Gulzar: ‘He can’t speak Urdu’

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah has always been known for candidly speaking his mind, and in a recent chat, he shared an anecdote proving that even in his younger days, he was quite fearless about expressing his opinions. During a recent appearance at the Kerala Literature Festival, where he was in conversation with actor Parvathy, Naseeruddin Shah shared that back when he was a student, he actually wrote a letter to Gulzar when he learnt that the lyricist-filmmaker was going to make a biopic on Mirza Ghalib, and was thinking about casting Sanjeev Kumar in the titular role.

The story dates back to the time when Naseer was still a student at Film and Television Institute of India in Pune. He shared, “Gulzar announced that he was making a film on Ghalib starring Sanjeev Kumar, who was a great actor but who had become somewhat complacent, I feel, when he became very successful. I was infuriated on reading this news and I wrote Gulzar bhai a letter and sent him a photograph which cost me Rs 5, and that was a fortune for me at that time.”

Naseer told Gulzar that Sanjeev Kumar would be a bad choice for the role, because he couldn’t speak Urdu. “I wrote him a letter saying ‘I am the actor you are looking for. Don’t cast Sanjeev Kumar, he can’t speak Urdu’. As it happened, Gulzar bhai never got that letter and then, Sanjeev Kumar fell ill so the film got shelved,” he shared.

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Many years later, in the late 1980s, Naseer played Ghalib in a show made by Gulzar. “Many may years later, Gulzar asked me if I would play Ghalib and I couldn’t believe this was happening so I went and met him, and I told him about this,” he shared. The show, Mirza Ghalib, was written and directed by Gulzar and aired on Doordarshan. The show also starred Tanvi Azmi and Neena Gupta. A lot of Ghalib’s poetry was performed in the show via ghazals sung by Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh.