Sujoy Ghosh recently opened up about casting Nawazuddin Siddiqui in his 2012 mystery-thriller film Kahaani and said that it was the ‘most unexpected casting that happened for the film’. Sujoy said that he was looking for someone with a heavy physique but his notions about the character changed when he met the actor. Nawazuddin played the role of an Intelligence Bureau officer, Mr. Khan.
In an interview with Mukesh Chhabra for Mashable India, Sujoy recalled, “Nawaz was the most unexpected casting that happened for the film. When I had written his character, I had a well-built and tall man in my mind who will have a certain power just in his physicality. But then I was told to meet Nawaz and I didn’t know him at all then. I met him first time at a café and I saw that he was slim and had a short height. He was nowhere close to the character I had written. Both of them were miles apart.”
However, Sujoy added that meeting Nawazuddin changed his perspective. “I saw that he has an anger inside him and I realized that he is my Khan. He has that anger and the power which comes from the chair he is sitting on. And he completely owned that performance,” said the director.
Kahaani also stars Vidya Balan in the lead and it is co-written and co-produced by Sujoy. Set in Kolkata, it tells the story of a pregnant woman looking for her missing husband in the city. It was released in theatres in 2012 to resounding critical acclaim. A spiritual sequel to the film was released in 2016 titled Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh.