Kamal Haasan, in a new interview, shared that while dubbing for Shankar’s Hindustani, he gave the filmmaker the idea of making Hindustani 2.
Hindustani (Indian) which hit the big screens in 1996, marked the first collaboration of Kamal Haasan and S Shankar. The film upon its release, received critical acclaim and also bagged three National Awards including ‘Best Actor’ for Haasan. After 28 years, the actor-filmmaker duo is bringing us Hindustani 2 (Indian 2).
At the trailer launch of the Hindi version of the film, Kamal Haasan had surprised everyone with his revelation that initially, he wasn’t keen keen on doing the 1996 film , so much so that he hiked his fee hoping that Shankar would back out on his own. But as fate would have it, he went on to do the film and it turned out to be a huge success.
Recently in an interview with News18 Showsha, Kamal revealed that while working on Hindustani in 1996, he was so impressed with the film that he urged S Shankar to kickstart the shooting for Hindustani 2 even before the first part could release.
The ‘Ulaganayagan’ told the publication, “Shankar might remember this. When I was doing the dubbing of Indian part one, I told him that let’s go for part two. We were in the throes of getting that film released. It felt like a joke but I had really meant it.”
He further recalled his earliest memory of the Enthiran director and shared, “I thought, he was a guy who either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he does. He was so calm. His demeanor was very unexpected considering he just had one hit behind him.”
He continued, “Even this time around when we were shooting for Indian 2, he had the same calm. He doesn’t have any less problems now. In fact, he must have had more problems then. But that calm was something I really admired about him. There must have been a lot of production problems but he had a fantastic producer in AM Ratnam.”
Kamal lauded Ratnam for backing a difficult and expensive film like Hindustani with the same composure as S Shankar.
Speaking about how they remember him fondly even now, he said, “That’s how good he was. He was our first audience. He was a technician – a make-up artist – who became a producer. Indian was the costliest film we were making in our careers. Imagine what it would have for him! But he stood by it. You could never tell that he was the producer of such a costly film because he was always happy and smiling and that was contagious.”
Coming back to Hindustani 2, besides Kamal Haasan, the political thriller also features Siddharth, Rakul Preet Singh and Priya Bhavani Shankar.
