Manoj Bajpayee, in a recent interview, shared his experience of working with late Yash Chopra on Shah Rukh Khan-Preity Zinta starrer Veer-Zaara.
If you can recall, Manoj Bajpayee played a pivotal role in Shah Rukh Khan-Preity Zinta’s 2004 cross-border romance, Veer-Zaara. In a recent interview, the ‘Aligarh’ actor spoke about how this Yash Chopra directorial came his way.
Recalling the year 2002, when most of his movies tanked at the box office, Manoj told Siddharth Kannan that it was ironical how some out of these earned his National Awards. Talking about one such film, Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s Pinjar, the actor said that apart from receiving the National Award for it, he also got the chance of working with Yash Chopra because of that movie.
The ‘Satya’ actor said, “I got a National award for Pinjar. But it did not work at the box-office. But you know what Pinjar gave me? It gave me Veer Zaara. Yash ji saw the film and he was mesmerised and he was adamant on getting me to do that role in Veer Zaara.”
He further continued, “Nahi toh Yash ji ke saath hum jaise actors ki koi jagah he nahi thi. Yash ji kehte bhi the ki ‘beta, yeh ab hojaega kyunki pata nahi kab kaam karenge tere saath main tere jaise actors ke liye film nahi banata (Yash ji used to say, ‘Son, this will happen now because I don’t know when I’ll work with you. I don’t make films for actors like you).”
In the same interview, Manoj also admitted that there was a time when he had to sign films simply because he was running out of money.
Reflecting on those tough times, he shared, “It was a bad time. The down that I have seen, I hope nobody gets to see. When you have to do a film just because ‘ab paisa khatam ho raha hai, ghar kaise chalega.’ Outside people didn’t know, there is nothing there in that big home.”
Manoj Bajpayee is currently awaiting the release of his next film, Bhaiyya Ji which is touted to be an action-packed entertainer.
