Tinnu Anand speaks on Rishi’s refusal to act along with Amitabh Bachchan

Tinnu Anand walks down the memory lane revealing many unknown facts

Monday, 5th July 2021

Tinnu Anand, Actor-Filmmaker has recently revealed through an interview that he had struggled a lot to embark on his journey as a director for the first time. His first directorial debut was the actioner movie ‘Duniya Meri Jeb Mein’. In that movie he could manage to bring two of the biggest celebs of the time on board; i.e. Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor. While talking of his first movie, Tinnu Anand said that Rishi Kapoor had expressed his desire not to work with Amitabh Bachchan, just a day after giving his sanction for the movie.

“My brother Bittu was a producer and we were not financially secure to make a film like Duniya Meri Jeb Mein. So, we had to listen to the whims and fancies of the actors. Like when I told Rishi Kapoor that I was going to narrate the story to Amitabh Bachchan, he was very happy. That night he went to a party of the film Zinda Dil and when his cameraman-director Sudarshan Nag asked him what was he feeling so happy about, he told him that the next day he and Amitabh would sign on the dotted line to act in Tinnu’s film,” the director said to ETimes.

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Tinnu further added that it was actually comment of Nag that had changed the mind of Rishi Kapoor and Kapoor told the directors that he would be doing the movie only if Amitabh Bachchan could be replaced.

“Nag asked him if it was about a trapeze act and when Rishi confirmed it was, they told him it would be foolish to do the film if Amitabh was going to be a part of it. The next morning my brother got a call from him — they were very close and Rishi had done two films with us without charging a single penny — and Rishi told Bittu that he would do the film on only one condition…He wanted us to cast someone else as Rishi was convinced that Amitabh had a better role than him and since he played a handicapped character, he would gain sympathy. We were in a quandary.”

The problem’s solution too was suggested by Rishi Kapoor who had put forth the name of Shashi Kapoor, his superstar uncle as Bachchan’s replacement. “Rishi suggested we take Shashi Kapoor, his uncle. But we didn’t know back then that Shashi will only give two hours in a day for the film. Apparently, he was called ‘taxi’ and that label was given to him by Raj Kapoor. (Shashi Kapoor had a frenetic lifestyle and he would move around so much that he’d perpetually spend most of his day in a car, hence the name taxi.)”

The movie Duniya Meri Jeb Mein was released in the year 1979, starring actors like Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Kapoor and Shashi Kapoor. Though Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor were competitors in terms of their profession, the duo featured jointly in many noteworthy movies such as Coolie, Kabhi Kabhi, Naseeb and  Amar Akbar Anthony. They had last worked together in the 2018 movie 102 Not Out by Umesh Shukla after a long interval of 27 years.

The News Talkie Bureau

Source:

Indianexpress