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Being a remake in Bollywood already comes with its own challenges, and director Sanjay Leela Bhansali faced all that and more while shooting his 2002 film Devdas. Everybody involved with the film, including Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Jackie Shroff and Madhuri Dixit, has talked about the film at one point or another. Recently the fans got a fresh new story from the sets of the film from the designers Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, who created the outfits and costumes for the film.
While making an appearance on the Namrata Zakaria Show on YouTube, the duo recalled their early days in the industry and how the workings of Bollywood have evolved. However, they admitted that even though things had changed by the turn of the century, working on Devdas was still a task. Abu recalled and said, “When I started working in the industry, it was very unprofessional. Payments were late; the schedules were horrible. The hero was the central character, and you had to be ready with the costume for the next sequence the moment they were done shooting. It got much better with time, but still, working on Devdas was a nightmare.
Sandeep added and said, “For me, Sanjay Leela Bhansali is a genius. The beauty is that he gave me and Abu the utmost respect, and he gave us a free hand to create whatever we wanted for Madhuri, Jackie and Shah Rukh. Fortunately for us, we had got the script bound, and we had already created all the clothes, but unfortunately his producer went to jail in the middle of the film.”
The producer in question here is Bharat Shah, who was arrested in 2001 for alleged links to the underworld. Recalling the aftermath of his arrest, Sandeep added, “As a result of what happened, it was a nightmare getting the money for our work. We were still in the middle of creating some garments; for example, the ‘Dola Re’ sequence was shot much later. Abu created that sketch, and some beautiful chicken outfits were done at the last minute, but no regrets because it got a national award.”
In an earlier interview shared by Wild Films India, Bhansali said, “People said this film is jinxed, this film brings bad vibes, you should shut down this film, this will be in losses. The set caught fire, Bharat bhai (producer Bharat Shah) was also in trouble, I was in a problem, Shah Rukh Khan was in a problem. We were all suffering. You don’t get anything in life easily. You have to work hard. Maybe it was bad timing, maybe it was our test that for how long can we sustain our passion.”
Shah was arrested following an investigation around the film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke. He financed the film, and the authorities believed he had been helped by the mafia. In the trial that followed, actor Preity Zinta was the only one who testified in front of the court, with all the other witnesses turning hostile. The testimony helped in the capturing of several individuals, including feared gangster Chota Shakeel’s henchman, Anjum Fazlani.
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