Hansal Mehta reveals how producers refused to fund Shahid with Rajkummar Rao as the lead

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta is currently basking in the success of his latest web series Scoop. In an interview, the director recalled how at the time of making his 2012 film Shahid, the producers were reluctant to cast Rajkummar Rao as the lead. However he was sure of the actor for the role and managed to convince them to cast him as the lead. (Also read: Hansal Mehta says ‘there is no agenda’ behind his films: It is my job to raise questions for the audience)

About Shahid

Shahid was based on the life of lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi, who was assassinated in 2010. For the film, Rajkummar Rao and director Hansal Mehta both went on to win the National Awards for Best Actor and Best Director respectively. Now, Hansal has shared how the producers of the film were hesitant to cast Rajkummar in the lead role.

How the producers reacted

Now in an interview with Humans of Bombay, Hansal said, “I found Shahid Azmi’s story and my life restarted. Basically, I found my voice again and my muse in finding that voice was Rajkummar. Shahid, the script was sent to a lot of stars, and somehow either the star did not want to work with me, or if the star wanted to work with me, he wanted to change the way Shahid was written, change the narrative completely. I put my foot down. I said, ‘Either it is this or it’s nothing’.”

And in that process, Mukesh Chabbra, Anurag (Kashyap), just threw Rajkummar, my way. They kept saying that meet Rajkummar. I said ‘I can’t meet him. What will I do with him?’. There was no money. The producer said, ‘Anurag is going to send Rajkummar to you. I’m not funding it. I’m not putting money in for Rajkummar’. He was very new. He had just done Love, Sex Aur Dhokha.

“They said have chai with him right now, he’s standing outside your office. He walks in, and in half an hour, I mean, there was something. I felt the right energy. I felt I connected to him and I saw honesty and hunger. He said he wanted to prove it. Shahid was a dream role and he recognised that…”

Hansal also said how before meeting the producer, he made a poster of Shahid with Rajkummar first. The producer had said after looking at the poster, “Poster is cool, but who is this fellow?” The director then told him to watch his then-upcoming film Ragini MMS, which convinced him on the acting skills of the actor.

Hansal Mehta and Shahid went on collaborate on three more projects after Shahid, which are City Lights, Aligarh and Omerta. Rajkummar was last seen in Anubhav Sinha’s Bheed. He recently won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his work on Badhaai Do.