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The Family Man directors Raj and DK recall re-writing Srikant Tiwari's character to fit Manoj Bajpayee: ‘Once we met him…’
Indian filmmaker duo, Raj & DK recalled making changes to the character, Srikant Tiwari in The Family Man so actor Manoj Bajpayee could fit like a glove.
Actor Manoj Bajpayee did multiple small roles before he became a National Award-winning actor who has been awarded the Padma Shri for his contributions to art. In the spy action thriller TV series, The Family Man, he essayed the role of a middle-class man and blew the minds of the audience with his craft. But did you know the creators of the show, Raj & DK had to make some changes to the character they had already penned just for Manoj?
During a chat with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel, filmmaker duo Raj & DK started by saying that they don’t ever write characters keeping the actors in their minds. Hence, they wrote the role of Srikant Tiwari for The Family Man and were brainstorming who could play the part. This is when Manoj Bajpayee’s name popped up. At that time, they didn’t know the actor and had never met him. “We had written a slightly different version of the character. Keeping that in mind, we were like ‘We don’t not’. But once we met him, suddenly we realized that we have to change the character and it will fit him like a glove,” Raj elaborated.
For the unknown, Bajpayee’s 2024 film Bhaiyya Ji marked his 100th movie in the industry. During an exclusive conversation at Pinkvilla Masterclass, the actor stated that it was filmmaker Apoorv Singh Karki who first informed him about this amazing feat. “He told me one day, ‘Sir do you know that you have completed your 100 films’ and I was completely surprised”, Manoj told us. Calling the milestone, a ‘miracle’, the senior actor divulged, “When I look back at the time when I first came to Mumbai, I never thought I’d even be able to do 10 films but now see - I am 100 films down.”
When quizzed about the epiphany moment when he realized he wanted to be an actor, Manoj told us, “I did my early education in a small village in Bihar named Bettiah. Ever since I got my senses, I saw my father as a filmy buff. He used to travel to cities from villages to watch cinemas at a time when there used to be just three theatres in total.” Meanwhile, on the work front, he was also seen in the TV series Killer Soup with Konkona Sen Sharma.
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