‘Sanjay Dutt had been banned by the entire industry’: Vidhu Vinod Chopra says actor was willing to do ‘anything’ to relaunch career

Filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra opened up about the circumstances behind Sanjay Dutt’s casting in the role of his lifetime, Munna Bhai. Chopra said that the actor had been banned by the entire industry at the time, after being convicted in a terrorism case, but Chopra didn’t think that this was the correct thing to do. So, to stand in solidarity with the troubled star, he announced that he’d signed him for a project. Dutt was first supposed to play the role that eventually went to Jimmy Shergill, with Shah Rukh Khan playing the central role of Munna Bhai.

In a chat at the Kellogg Management School, the filmmaker admitted that he didn’t actually want Sanjay Dutt in the film, which is why, when the actor was released from jail and ready to work, he told him that they’d have to wait until they work together. “Sanjay Dutt went to jail. I didn’t know him at all. The whole industry banned him, but I thought this was very wrong, so I went to his house and announced a film with him. His father said that I’ll be banned as well, but I said, ‘I don’t care’,” Chopra said.

Also read – ‘Sanjay Leela Bhansali was my assistant’: Vidhu Vinod Chopra recalls losing temper when SLB cut ‘a terrible trailer’ for 1942, Rajkumar Hirani got it right Advertisement He continued, “Then, Sanjay Dutt comes out of jail. I remember him calling me from the car. He said he wanted to meet, and he wanted his first comeback film to be with me. I told him, ‘I’ll never make a film with you, I just announced it because it was the right thing to do’. He’s a very simple man. A good man, but a simple man. He thought the announcement meant that we were actually going to work together. I said, ‘I cannot make a film with you unless the equation changes, because I cannot exploit a good deed’. It’s a terrible thing to do, that you do something good and exploit it.” Dutt also didn’t understand this concept, Chopra admitted. “So, when I told him to do Jimmy Shergill’s role, he agreed. He said, ‘Anything’. Then, Shah Rukh, of course, came to me and he had a throat thing… So, I decided that Sanjay Dutt is the right guy. I told him, ‘You’re doing Munna Bhai’. And he’s such a simple fellow, he said, ‘I know’. I said, ‘No, not that role, main Munna Bhai’. He said, ‘Okay, if you say so, I’ll do it’. He never reads a script…” Chopra said that Dutt would be habitually late to work, which forced director Rajkumar Hirani to make calls to him in frustration. “Raju would keep calling me and saying, ‘Sir, he hasn’t come’. I’d call him up, and he wouldn’t answer. The moment he used to reach the set, he’d call back and say, ‘Yes, sir, you called?'” Munna Bhai went on to become a blockbuster hit, and spawned a sequel, titled Lage Raho Munna Bhai. Chopra and Hirani produced and directed a film based on Dutt’s life, starring Ranbir Kapoor in the lead role.

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