Piyush Mishra threatened to set himself on fire in front of ‘healthy director’ of period drama who snatched his credit

He said in Hindi, “I won’t take the director’s name. He told me that he wasn’t going to give me credit for writing the film, and that I could take my money.” When the interviewer playfully suggested that he was talking about a biopic on Bhagat Singh — Piyush has been credited for writing the dialogues of director Rajkumar Santoshi’s The Legend of Bhagat Singh — he replied with a smile, “It’s a story, I’ve taken creative liberties.”

He continued, “Then, the director whose name I don’t want to take — a healthy director, a fat director — called me to his room. Around that same time, I’d met Naseeruddin Shah and Vishal Bhardwaj, and they told me that I wouldn’t be able to do anything to save my credit. I told them that I’d worked on the film for a year-and-a-half, how could I take this lying down? Those days, I was out of control. So, I got drunk, and I showed up at the director’s office. I’d taken some petrol with me in a bottle. I poured the petrol over his table, lit a match, and threatened to burn it all down, including myself, if I don’t get the credit. Then he agreed to give me half credit, at least I got that much. I won’t reveal which film, but you are free to guess.”

After making a name for himself in the theatre circuit, Piyush Mishra started out in Bollywood in the early 2000s, and is best known for his collaborations with Vishal Bhardwaj and Anurag Kashyap.