Taapsee Pannu reveals her Haseen Dillruba director Vinil Mathew once 'rejected' her for an ad; he facepalms

Taapsee Pannu revealed in an interview that her Haseen Dillruba director Vinil Mathew had rejected her for a commercial once. Taapsee has been vocal about not being the first choice for Haseen Dillruba, which arrives on Netflix on Friday.

In an interview, Vinil Mathew attempted to explain himself, and said that screenwriter Kanika Dhillon wrote Haseen Dillruba after she'd worked with Taapsee Pannu in Manmarziyaan. Because of the similarities between the two projects, it was possibly assumed that Taapsee wouldn't be interested.

But the actor interjected, and said in an interaction with The Quint, "Nahi, nahi, ek aur reason ho sakta hai, abhi mujhe yaad aaya (No, there could be another reason, I just remembered)." Vinil seemed to catch on, too. He facepalmed and said, "Hey bhagwan (Oh God)." Taapsee continued, "You've got it right, Vinil. Ek aur reason ho sakta hai (The other reason could be) Vinil had already rejected me for an ad before. I had auditioned for an ad..."

Vinil in his explanation had said, "One of the reasons, I'm guessing, why Taapsee wasn't the immediate choice, could be because Kanika wrote this film after Manmarziyaan, which was also about a love triangle, which also had a similar story structure. Probably they felt that when you're doing something similar, maybe she herself might not be interested. They might have thought about giving it a different treatment. That could be a possible reason why she wasn't the first choice."

Haseen Dillruba, co-starring Vikrant Massey and Harshvardhan Rane, is a small-town murder mystery with romance elements. It tells the story of a woman named Rani, her husband Rishu, and the hunk who disrupts their compromised marriage. Taapsee had previously told Navbharat Times in an interview, "The day Kanika Dhillon told me about the basic concept of Haseen Dilruba, I liked it a lot. Unfortunately, I was not the first choice for the film. It eventually came to me, after they exhausted all their options."