Hansal Mehta: ‘Producers were not willing to fund Shahid with Rajkummar Rao as the lead’

Celebrated filmmaker Hansal Mehta - whose new Netflix crime drama television series Scoop, starring Karishma Tanna, is garnering widespread appreciation - recently revealed that producers were not quite willing to fund his 2012 biographical drama film Shahid, which had Rajkummar Rao as the lead actor. 

Also read: Scoop review: Karishma Tanna shines in this gripping Hansal Mehta directorial that should not be missed!

Inspired by the life of slain lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi, the movie featured Rajkummar as Azmi, alongside Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Prabhleen Sandhu and Baljinder Kaur. Premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, Shahid eventually bagged two titles at the 61st National Film Awards - ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Director’. 

Speaking about why he was sure of Rajkummar to play the titular role, Hansal told Humans of Bombay, “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’.”

Also read: Hansal Mehta on Scoop: ‘It’s an exploration into our current times’

Adding to that he said, “Then, Mukesh Chabbra and Anurag Kashyap just threw Rajkummar my way. They kept saying 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 to have chai with him right now. He’s standing outside your office. He walked 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...”

Before meeting the producer, Hansal made a poster of Shahid with Rajkummar. And the producer said, “Poster is cool, but who is this fellow?” Hansal then told him to watch his then-upcoming film Ragini MMS, which convinced him of the acting skills of the actor. After Shahid, the filmmaker and the actor collaborated on three more projects - City Lights, Aligarh and Omerta. 

Cut to now, Rajkummar’s latest film Bheed - directed by Anubhav Sinha and also featuring Bhumi Pednekar and Pankaj Kapur is being widely appreciated.