Sonu Sood, in a new interview, shared that he was originally supposed to play Chulbul Pandey’s role in the 2010 film Dabangg.
Talk about Salman Khan’s iconic characters on the celluloid and you simply cannot miss his cop act as Chulbul Pandey in Dabangg which remains one of his most popular roles till date! But do you know that this role was originally meant for Sonu Sood who eventually ended up playing the role of the main antagonist, Chhedi Singh in the film?
In a recent interview with Shubhankar Mishra on his YouTube show, Sonu revealed that Abhinav Kashyap had initially told him that he was making a cop film with a character named Chulbul, and wanted him to play that role.
The Fateh actor shared, “Abhinav Kashyap (Dabangg’s director) was an assistant to Mani Ratnam earlier. He was a very good friend of mine. He told me that I am writing a cop story with the name Chulbul, we will do it together. I was also excited and told him that we would do it.”
When Arbaaz Khan who was one of the producers on Dabangg, narrated the film to his actor-brother Salman Khan, the Bollywood star liked the script. Arbaaz then informed everyone that Salman wanted to work in the film, and that’s how he bagged the role of Chulbul Pandey.
After the lead role went to Salman Khan, Sonu was approached for the negative role in the film which he initially declined. However, director Abhinav Kashyap continued to pursue him. Sonu then asked him to provide some depth to the character and give him a special song in Dabangg.
The actor recalled, “They asked me, ‘What is the problem with the role, why aren’t you doing it?’ I asked Abhinav to twist the role a bit. Let’s write it more for the next 2–3 days. If I understand it, then I’ll do it. And, I need a song in the film. I asked them to include an item number. When Farah (Farah Khan, choreographer-filmmaker) was making the song, I was conversing with her about including certain steps and how it should be a hit.”
Sonu said that he was keen to do ‘Munni Badnaam’ song, but Salman decided to take over ‘his’ song at the last minute.
“Abhinav came with one good and one bad news. Good news about one of the scenes and bad one about Salman taking the song. I said, ‘It is my song, how will he come in between like that’. He said that he will do it through a raid scene. I told them that it’s wrong, I only had one song. But finally, whatever happened, happened or the good. People still remember the song,” he said in his interview.
Nevertheless, Sonu still managed to impress the audience with his role of Chhedi Singh in Dabangg. The film turned out to be a huge blockbuster, and was followed by two sequels- Dabangg 2 (2012) and Dabangg 3 (2019).
