Director Neeraj Pandey: Naseeruddin Shah’s manager had rejected A Wednesday! on his behalf

Director Neeraj Pandey who debuted with the 2008 thriller A Wednesday! recently revealed in an interview that Naseeruddin Shah’s manager had rejected the film on the actor’s behalf but later when Shah actually read the script, he was immediately on-board.

The film also starred Anupam Kher. Discussing about the cast, Neeraj also mentioned that no one apart from the film’s “core group” wanted the two actors in the lead role. “There was strong resistance that you are a debutant director, it’s your first film, you are taking two older actors, there’s no heroine, there’s no song. I mean nobody was willing to back it including UTV that ultimately ended up funding the film. They kept on pushing younger names to us,” he told Fever FM.

The Baby (2015) director described the casting process as “funny” and said that when he sent the script to Naseeruddin Shah, after a month or so his manager told him that he (Naseer) did not like the film. “I moved on and I started looking for someone else,” he said.

But later one day, late in the night, Neeraj got a call. “It was from a landline number and there was this voice. The voice of Mr. Shah,” he said. “My first reaction was ‘but your manager said you don’t like it’ and he replied , ‘Wonderful. When can we meet?’ We met up the next day and that kickstarted that journey,” he added.

Neeraj’s next, Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha, a love story starring Ajay Devgn and Tabu, will hit the theatres soon.