Amar Kaushik, in a new interview, shared an interesting on-set story about Akshay Kumar’s cameo in Stree 2.
Rajkummar Rao-Shraddha Kapoor’s Stree 2 set the cash registers ringing at the box office, and emerged as the highest grossing Hindi film of all time. When the horror comedy released in cinema halls, fans were in for a surprise when they saw Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar’s cameo in the film.
The actor essayed the role of a patient in a psychiatric hospital who helps Vicky (Rajkummar Rao) and his friends in finding a way to defeat Sarkata, the main antagonist in the film. At one point, we see Jana (Abhishek Banerjee) sitting on Akshay’s thigh and seductively asking him about Sarkataa.
Do you know originally, Abhishek was supposed to sit on a stool while having that conversation with Akshay’s character in the film? However, the latter improvised the scene and asked him to sit on his thigh instead.
Amar Kaushik, in an interview with the YouTube channel of Men Of Culture, admitted that he was worried about receiving backlash from women for that portion in the cameo. As the film focused on women empowerment, the filmmaker said that he asked Akshay to take the creative liberties, but also keep the film’s core theme in mind.
The ‘Bhediya’ director recalled, “I said we’ll make him sit on the stool, but he improvised and asked him to sit on his thigh. I was like it should not be misconceived and women might criticize me.”
Kaushik said that he then recalled his old days and thought of giving Akshay’s suggestion a try. Nevertheless, he still asked Akshay to make Abhishek sit on the stool. However, the actor assured him that things would be fine, and so the director decided to go ahead with Akshay’s conviction.
In the interview, Amar also noted that one should never go overboard with an actor’s conviction. He said that as a director, one must keep control of what one wants and should realize to what extent it will be funny.
The filmmaker recalled team members laughing over that scene on the sets and Akshay also insisted on taking multiple shots. It was then when he thought that he could see Priyadarshan’s skills there. He said that he shot the scene in such a hurry that he forgot to adjust the camera to slow motion mode, adding that the jitter is still visible in the shot. However, at that time, he believed that if people would react and praise that scene, then Akshay would tell him that his skills are close to Priyadarshan which would be a great compliment for him.
Amar further recalled how Akshay agreed to do a cameo in Stree 2 despite having a busy schedule. Revealing that the Bollywood star just takes one weekly off on Sundays, and never works on that day, he shared that upon his request, the actor agreed to shoot on a Sunday with the only condition that they finish filming his scenes within six hours.
Besides Akshay Kumar, Stree 2 also features a special appearance by Varun Dhawan as ‘Bhediya’.
