Subhash Ghai opens up about Shatrughan Sinha's problematic attitude on set, reveals Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor were 'professionals': 'Discipline of actors is very important'
Subhash Ghai revealed why didn't he work more with his longtime friend Shatrughan Sinha and also called him overconfident. The filmmaker also lauded 'professionals' Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff.
Actor Shatrughan Sinha and director Subhash Ghai have been friends since their struggling years and continue to be. However, their professional association didn’t last long because of certain reasons. Talking about the same recently on The Invincibles Series with Arbaaz Khan, Ghai called Sinha ‘overconfident’.
For the unversed, Subhash's directorial debut movie Kalicharan itself had Shatrughan Sinha playing the lead role. In another interview, the actor reportedly claimed that he was sleeping during the narration of this film. Reacting to this Ghai told Arbaaz, “Whenever we make mistakes, we also have justification for it.”
According to the filmmaker, when he narrated Kalicharan’s story to him, Shatrughan was like “What subject did you write? I am already doing an inspector’s role in four films, why will I do this.” Subhash understood that Sinha envisioned the script around Prabhakar’s character and not Kalicharan (it was a double role).
The Karz helmer said, “It is the director’s fate through which lens an actor is listening to a story because, at the back of his mind, he’s processing whether he wants to sign the film or not - or whether he can do it or not.” According to Subhash, the actors are only 35% interested in hearing the narration and only if there’s a star director, they go ahead to say yes to every statement.
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After this incident, Ghai went to tell producer NN Sippy that Shatrughan didn’t like the subject, and cut to 3 days later, Sippy called Subhash that he returned from the actor’s house and Shatughan said, ‘Ye to superhit film hai’. When Arbaaz asked why Shatrughan Sinha did this, Ghai said that because ‘Shatru wanted to help me, his friend’. The duo have known each other since FTII days.
The Hero director was then asked why didn’t their association last long, to which Subhash was quick to say, “The biggest problem of Shatrughan was that he never reached sets on time. If it was a 9 am shift he would come by 12-1, if it's a 1 pm shift, he’d come at 4. So this was truly problematic. I confronted him saying ‘Look man, you are my friend, we have done three films together but with this attitude, we cannot work out.”
Subhash further called Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff ‘professionals’ and admitted that he would always choose professionals over ones who are good but throw tantrums. “Discipline of actors is very important,” Subhash signed off.