Prosenjit Chatterjee opens up about turning down Maine Pyar Kiya: ‘Most important thing is that Salman Khan was born’

“Why should I talk about a Hindi film? I have lost other films too which went on to become big successes, running in theatres for 50-75 weeks. These are not films that I said no to, it’s just that they didn’t happen due to various reasons such as the unavailability of dates. Why regret such things? We have to go forward,” he added.

One of the most prominent figures in modern Bengali cinema, Prosenjit recently did a pivotal role in Hansal Mehta’s crime drama TV series Scoop.

During the promotion of Vikramaditya Motwane and Soumik Sen’s period drama TV series Jubilee, Prosenjit had stated that he was the one who was first selected for the lead role in Maine Pyar Kiya. The actor made the statement during a chat with Bollywood Bubble. Though the interviewer asked the actor to elaborate about his decision to not do the film, Prosenjit refused to reveal more details and simply dismissed the question by stating, “Leave it. Forget it. Let’s talk about Jubilee.”

A few days before that, the actor had revealed the real reason behind turning down Maine Pyar Kiya. “My Bengali film Amar Sangi with Vijayeta Pandit had become a huge hit. My dates were blocked, so much as I would have loved to do Maine Pyar Kiya, I had to reluctantly refuse the offer. I was doing a Bengali film with Pahlajji (Nihalani), who was a big producer then. Pahlajji came to me one day and said, ‘Puttar, I have a subject for a Hindi film, you must do it. You are a Bombay ka hero.’ Aandhiyan was a good subject though David Dhawan (director) was not too well known then. Mumtazji, like Madhuri (Dixit) today, is evergreen, but we were playing mother and son and it didn’t go down well with the public,” he told rediff.com.