Renowned filmmaker Hansal Mehta keeps on revealing different secrets of the film industry. His cunning disclosures hit headlines quite often. Recently, the director opened up on actor Rajkummar Rao’s work in his film ‘Shahid’. He revealed that the producers were not ready to invest in the project because he was keen on casting then relatively newer face Rajkummar in the lead role. Hansal said that he somehow convinced the producers and made this film with Rajkummar only.

Hansal talks about ‘Shahid’

In an interview to Humans of Bombay, director Hansal stated, “I found Shahid Azmi’s story and my life started again. I mainly found my voice again and my inspiration in finding that voice was Rajkummar. Shahid’s script was sent to a lot of stars, and somehow either the star refused to work with me or if he agreed to do it, he wanted to change the way Shahid was written. They intervened to change the story completely. I put my foot down and I said, ‘It’s either this or nothing’.”

Hansal said that in the process of casting, Mukesh Chabbra and Anurag Kashyap recommended Rajkummar’s name to him. But the producer said that he is not funding Hansal’s film as he will not put money in for Rajkummar. He was very new. He had just done ‘Love, Sex Aur Dhokha’.

After looking at the poster of ‘Shahid’ with Rajkummar on it, producers said, “Poster is cool, but who is this fellow?” Hansal then asked him to watch the actor’s then-upcoming film ‘Ragini MMS’, which proved good in his favour. Producers got convinced with Rajkummar’s acting skills after watching his film.

About ‘Shahid’

For the unversed, ‘Shahid’ was based on a lawyer and human rights activist who was murdered in 2010. Hansal Mehta made a successful film on this incident and in 2012, it was screened for the audience. The filmmaker received the National Award for Best Director for this film. Rajkummar was nominated as the best actor in the category of National Awards.