‘You are Amitabh Bachchan’s son, you have no worries,’ director Apoorva Lakhia recalls why he got upset with Abhishek Bachchan

“He called me home and told me, ‘This film should be made. This is a brilliant script. This should be made 100 per cent but not with me.’ I was shocked because I thought he was doing it,” Lakhia narrated. The filmmaker got extremely ‘angry’ at Abhishek’s suggestion.

A poster of Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost. (Express archive photo)

“I got up from my chair and said, ‘Give me my script’. I couldn’t hide my anger since I didn’t belong to the industry and didn’t know you cannot get angry at the actor. He gave me my script and I left. He called me while I was leaving and asked, “Bro, are you angry with me?’ I told him, ‘100% I am. You are Amitabh Bachchan’s son, you don’t have any tension. What about me? I have been waiting for six months, travelling in an auto rickshaw,” added Lakhia.

However, a week later, Bachchan decided to meet Lakhia again. “A week later, I got to know Abhishek wants to meet. I thought he would get upset and reprimand me for how I talked to him. But, when I went to meet him, he said, ‘When do you want to start?'” shared Lakhia. Asked what changed Bachchan’s mind, Lakhia wondered, “Maybe he found that I am honest.”

Since then, Lakhia has been friends with Abhishek Bachchan and his family. For him, the actor is the most ‘relatable human being’.

Appreciating the actor, the filmmaker added, “There is nobody like Abhishek Bachchan. He is the son of Amitabh Bachchan, husband of Aishwarya Rai, son of Jaya Bachchan, but he is Abhishek Bachchan. If everyone is a superhero in the film industry, let’s say Salman (Khan) is Superman, Shah Rukh Khan is Spiderman, then Abhishek is Batman because he is not a superhero, he is a human being. He is a relatable human being like Bruce Wayne, who comes from an affluent family but he is down to earth and wants to help people. I always say my superhero is a human being and that is Abhishek Bachchan.”

Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost was released in 2003 and also starred Lara Dutta, Chunky Panday, Yashpal Sharma and Rajendra Gupta among others. The film couldn’t pull people to the theaters and tanked at the box office.