‘Nawazuddin Siddiqui was carrying Rajpal Yadav’s suitcase’: Anurag Kashyap recalls actor told him ‘I don’t have money to eat’

All unforgeable meetings take place at a railway station. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap has revealed how he discovered actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, with whom he went on to have a formidable partnership in projects like Gangs of Wasseypur, Scared Games and Raman Raghav 2.0, among others.

In an interview posted by Rkz Theatre & Films Group, Anurag was asked about his first meeting with Nawazuddin, whom he met while he was casting for Ram Gopal Varma’s 1998 film Satya. “There was this very good actor called Rajpal Yadav, who had come to Mumbai, but was leaving the city, because he was depressed and had given up. One actor called Ashraf Ulhaq, he has passed away now, was in Black Friday. He told me can you talk to this guy (Rajpal) and give him some hope. So, we met him at the railway station and Nawazuddin Siddiqui was carrying his suitcase! That’s how I met him,” the filmmaker revealed.

Also Read | An airline lost Anurag Kashyap’s only handwritten copy of the Gangs of Wasseypur script, just as he was about to pitch it to a producer

Anurag Kashyap then recalled how he told Rajpal Yadav that he casting for a film called Shool and had a role for him. Rajpal eventually took up the one-scene role which featured him as a coolie.

Story continues below this ad

Nawazuddin Siddiqui in a still from Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (Photo: IMDb)

“From there his career started. Nawaz was there, so he asked me, ‘Can I also get a role?’ I told him there was no other role left but maybe I can put you somewhere. He said, ‘I have no money to eat, I will do anything.’ So in Shool, Nawaz played a waiter in one scene featuring Manoj and Raveena. It was a very thin Nawaz and that’s how it all started,” he added.

After Shool, Nawazuddin did a small role in Aamir Khan’s Sarfarosh and worked with Anurag Kashyap for the first time in his directorial Black Friday. He later found wider acclaim with Sujoy Ghosh’s Khaani, followed by Kashya’s two-part epic Gangs of Wasseypur.