Vidya Balan Went Through Several Tests Before Being Cast In Parineeta; Swanand Kirkire Shares The Reason

Swanand Kirkire who wrote the lyrics of Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta, recalls how Vidya Balan had to go through several tests as producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra wasn’t convinced about her casting as the leading lady.

Vidya Balan stepped into the Hindi film industry with late director Pradeep Sarkar’s 2005 film Parineeta which was a film adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1914 Bengali novella of the same name. The film upon its release opened to positive reviews with Vidya’s performance receiving appreciation from every nook and corner.

However, you guys would be surprised to know that producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra wasn’t convinced about casting Vidya Balan as the heroine of his film. This revelation was made by singer-writer-lyricist Swanand Kirkire, who wrote the lyrics for Parineeta in a recent interview with Mashable India.

Kirkire told the publication that to present the idea of Parineeta to Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Pradeep Sarkar took the song “Raat Humaari Toh Chaand Ki Saheli Hai” from  him and shot it on the set of one of his ads with Vidya Balan.

Swanand Kirkire shared, “Vidhu Vinod Chopra was quite impressed with it, and he told Sarkar, ‘This is amazing. You will direct my film. Shantanu Moitra will be the music director, and Swanand Kirkire will be the lyricist. But the girl will be somebody else.’ So, he rejected Vidya in the first place.”

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However, according to Kirkire, Pradeep was adamant about casting Vidya Balan and did several tests with her to convince Vidhu Vinod Chopra to cast her in Parineeta.