Shabana Azmi says she and Sanjeev Kumar were treated very differently by Satyajit Ray on Shatranj Ke Khilari sets

Remembering how she got the role, she said, “I got this call from Shama Zaidi, and she said, ‘Listen, Satyajit Ray has seen Ankur and has liked your work very much, and he wants to cast you in Shatranj Ke Khilari’. And she said, He’s going to call you up’. I said, ‘No, come on’. And then, this booming voice came, ‘Am I speaking to Shabana Azmi, this is Satyajit Ray’.”

He immediately told her about the part he wanted her to do, and there was ‘no question’ of discussing monetary matters, so Shabana agreed instantly. But there was no contact after that. “I remember I had gone to the Tehran Film Festival, and he was also there, and I thought he is going to talk to me about the part. But it was a party, and I don’t think he thought it was wise to talk shop. And so, he spoke about everything except my part. And I found that very strange,” she said.

Shabana said that they next met in Kolkata, and she was dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt. But he made her change into different clothes, and Shabana immediately felt that it affected her posture. He seemed to be impressed with her work on the film after a couple of tweaks and adjustments.

She continued, “The thing with Manik da, as he was called, is that with Saeed Jaffrey and myself, he gave very little instruction. For what reason, I don’t know. Maybe because we were familiar with the language. But with Sanjeev Kumar, he used to even decide that you should take your hand out so much of your body. Now that must’ve been horribly restricting for Sanjeev… But it was completely different in the way he expected me to do something, and also Saeed Jaffrey, maybe also Farooq Sheikh.”

Shatranj Ke Khilari also starred Victor Banerjee, Amjad Khan, Richard Attenborough, Farida Jalal and others. The film was released in 1977.