Nawazuddin Siddiqui recalls Anurag Kashyap's scolding on first day of Gangs of Wasseypur shoot: ‘Why are you overacting?’

Nawazuddin Siddiqui recently recalled in an interview an incident on the first day of his shoot for Gangs of Wasseypur and how he got a dressing down from director Anurag Kashyap.

Nawaz played Faizal Khan, son of ruffian Sardar Khan, played by Manoj Bajpayee in the film.

Appearing on Shubhankar Mishra’s podcast, Nawaz said that he was sure he wanted to do the film after reading only a brief plot description. “I wanted to give it my all. Slowly, I started behaving like Al Pacino. The first day of shoot, I was full of Al Pacino. Full on. That’s how I was behaving.” That evening, Nawaz said, Anurag took him to a corner of a small Varanasi hotel where they were staying for a private chat.

He said, ‘Yeh kya kar raha hai tu? Tu pagal hai kya? Kis tarah se kar raha hai tu? Overacting kyu kar raha hai? (What in the world are you doing? How are you playing it? Have you lost your mind, why are you overacting?)'” Nawaz said that he was mortified. “Maine sar pakad liya (I was overwhelmed),” he said, and revealed that the entire day had to be reshot. “I did away with the power that I was showing completely,” he added.

Gangs of Wasseypur series was Nawazuddin’s breakthrough as a leading man in Hindi cinema. In a recent interview, Anurag praised Nawaz’s talent, and said that the industry still puts him in a box because of his physical appearance.