Sanjay Leela Bhansali denies casting Sharmin Segal just because she’s his niece, says he put her ‘through the grind with innumerable tests’

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He continued, “She had to go through the grind. There were an innumerable number of tests, auditions. There’s no end to the number of tests I’ve done with her, after I’ve decided to cast her. I told her, ‘You have to go through the grind, you have to get it right, because this world you’ve never been to, you’ve never acted in. All these other actors have worked over a period of time, they’ve played characters like this and have understood all these nakhras and thumkas and the nazakat…'”

Bhansali also declared that the star system in India should be ‘demolished’, and expressed satisfaction with the performances that his cast was able to deliver in Heeramandi. He said that even when he has worked with major stars — Bhansali has collaborated with the likes of Aishwarya Rai, Madhuri Dixit, Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Salman Khan — he views them as actors first. “If you get the casting right, half the battle is won. People say, ‘Don’t you think you need bigger stars?’ I said, ‘No, these are fantastic actors, and I need actors’. I feel we should get rid of the star system.”

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Several of Sharmin’s co-stars have spoken about the criticism that she has received for her performance; Sharmin herself hasn’t participated in any post-release interviews, and has muted comments on Instagram. Recently, actor Jason Shah admitted that the character of Alamzeb had a lot of dramatic potential that he felt wasn’t fully explored by Sharmin, whose performance he described as ‘one-tone’. Before that, actor Shekhar Suman defended Sharmin’s performance in a backhanded manner, and said that it was supposed to be muted. Heeramandi was released to mixed reviews on Netflix on May 1.