Vishal Bhardwaj penned Khufiya for male actors and all declined: ‘Aisi ki tesi sab male actors ki, my hero is Tabu’

‘I know exactly what he wants’

But, this limited professional collaboration hardly reflects the depth of their bond. Moreover, the past two projects they’ve worked on together have resulted in timeless pieces of art, much like their enduring friendship. In a recent interview with Bhardwaj Rangan when Tabu was asked about whether she would accept a role from Vishal that she wasn’t comfortable with, she responded with unwavering confidence, “He won’t bring me such a role. Also, by the virtue of working with him I will feel comfortable in any role. What I feel for him is beyond the realm of film casting. It’s too potent what I have with him. Also, I feel, in terms of characters, I know exactly what he wants. It’s not possible to have that kind of surety with somebody even in your personal life and I have that with him.”

‘Aisi ki tesi male actors ki’

During the same interview, Vishal disclosed that he initially wrote Khufiya with a male character in mind. However, when all the male actors he approached declined the role, he rewrote it with a female lead and courageously approached Tabu. He said, “One day I thought asi ki tesi sab male actors ki, my hero is Tabu. The obligation is now on me to prove that she made the right choice.”

‘Nobody has adapted Shakespeare the way Vishal has’

Tabu has consistently made bold choices when working with Vishal. In their last project, Haider (2014), she portrayed the mother of Shahid Kapoor, who is only nine years her junior. Though it took convincing for Tabu to play a mother, she understood the nerve of her character when Vishal explained that he didn’t want Tabu to look like a mother; rather he wanted her to look like his lover. “You almost feel odd that these two are mom and son,” Tabu said in an Indian Express interview. “I don’t think anybody has adapted Shakespeare the way he has, with Maqbool, Omkara and Haider,” she said in another interview.

‘Our trio was broken when Irrfan died’

“Tabu and Irrfan are two most effortless actors, and our trio was broken when Irrfan died,” Vishal said. Nevertheless, this trio managed to create a cult classic. Vishal embarked on the journey of making Maqbool when he was just one-film-old as a director. Despite his relative inexperience in filmmaking, he assembled an extraordinary ensemble cast.

Tabu arrived on the sets of Maqbool (2004) carrying the weight of her previous hit films like Virasat, Biwi No1, Hum Sath Sath Hai, Chandni Bar and more. However, the actress embraced the vision of the novice director Vishal when she took on the role of a mistress to an aging gangster, Jahangir Khan (portrayed by Pankaj Kapoor). While Maqbool boasted a cast of legendary male actors – Irrfan, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapoor – it was Tabu’s strategic role and her performance that made her stand-up in the crowd of a male dominated film.

While we remember Tabu’s quietly confident performance in Maqbool, she remembers the film for the ever-lasting memories she created while shooting for it and the beginning of her decades-long collaboration with Vishal Bhardwaj. Speaking about the film she told Bollywood Hungama, “I remember everything about Maqbool, every day about Maqbool, every moment, every set we worked at, every fragrance, all the food that we ate – everything.”

Going by the statistics, Tabu and Vishal Bharadwaj have always created magic on screen. Perhaps this is why they have been so conscious of choosing their projects together. Will Khufiya match up to their past projects? Well, in this Vishal Bhardwaj film, Tabu takes on the role of a RAW spy – a first in her career.