‘Salman Khan would show up at 5 pm, made entire crew wait for him in hot sun all day; arrived in helicopter and cancelled shoot’: Dabangg director Abhinav Kashyap

Abhinav said that his crew would often wait for Salman to show up, and when he did, he would spend over an hour having coffee outside his vanity van, wasting more time. “We would scramble to get a couple of shots in the can, and that would be it for the day,” Abhinav said, recalling one instance where hundreds of crew members were left waiting for Salman to come shoot the film’s climax in Panchgani.

Also read – Salman Khan withheld payments for Dabangg, left Anurag Kashyap’s brother neck-deep in debt; Rs 21 lakh car he received as gift still in Arbaaz Khan’s name

Abhinav recalled, “This one time, we were shooting in Panchgani, which is over four hours away from Mumbai. We knew that Salman is coming from Mumbai, so it could be a long wait. We assumed that he would not show up by at least 2 or 3 pm. Initially, his people kept lying. They kept saying he’s left and is on his way. Then they said that he is coming in his vanity van, and is sleeping. At around 1 or 2 pm, they said that Salman hasn’t left yet, but will come by helicopter. At around 3 or 4 pm, I was told that he has finally left Galaxy.”

Abhinav said that after 5 pm, he was contemplating cancelling the shoot for the day, when he heard a helicopter approaching. There was no place for the helicopter to land on set, so he assumed that it would land somewhere else, and Salman would be driven to the set. But the helicopter came right above the set, descended to within 15 metres of the ground. “Then, Salman stuck his head out, made a gesture with his hand, and left,” Abhinav said, explaining that the actor simply decided that he would shoot the next day, and had gone off to his hotel.

“There were easily over 200 people on set that day, as we were shooting the climax,” he said, adding, “The day-players had to be paid. It costs money.” Previously, Murugadoss had said in an interview with Valaipechu Voice, “It’s not easy to shoot with a star. Even day scenes, we have to shoot at night because he turns up to sets only by 8 pm. We are people who are used to shooting right from early mornings, but that’s not how things work there. Almost everything was shot on green mat and we used VFX extensively to get the daylight effect for the scenes that were shot at night. On top of that, multiple people used to suggest a lot of spot changes on the set in the script.”

In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, Grusha Kapoor recalled putting her foot down once when Salman arrived late to work on the Jaanam Samjha Karo set. “We were tired by this point. We were TV actors and we had been there since 8:30 am and we were supposed to pack up at 9 pm. After Salman came, we learnt that the scene would happen. Salman was very nice to everyone, greeted everyone,” she recalled, adding, “He was sitting on the sofa in a ganji and jeans and he was talking to the director. Suddenly I realised that they have been discussing this scene for far too long. I thought, ‘What is this great scene that is about happen’? Me being me, there was no fear, I had nothing to lose. I just turned and snapped at the director, ‘What are we waiting for? It’s almost 9 pm’.”

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