Director Vikramaditya Motwane recently revealed that he initially considered Ajay Devgn for the role of the father in his debut directorial Udaan. The character was ultimately played by Ronit Roy. Vikramaditya said he decided against approaching Ajay for the role because he knew that if the actor agrees he, and not the story, would become the most important aspect of the film.
In an interview with casting director Mukesh Chhabra on Mashable, the filmmaker said, “They’d tell me to cast a star, but how could I approach someone like Shahid Kapoor? This boy needs to look innocent, he needs to look 17 years old. It’s true that I always thought of Ajay Devgn while writing the film. Even today, I wonder if I should have gone to him… I never approached him. I assumed that he’d say no. But in the back of my mind, I always knew that this was the boy’s film. The poster of this film was never the father, it was always the boy. That’s why I deliberately didn’t go in that direction.”
In another interview with The Comment Section YouTube channel, Vikramaditya told how Ronit came to be a part of the film, “Ronit was staying in Anurag’s (Kashyap’s) building at the time, and we’d cast another actor in the role of the father. And Anurag met Ronit one day in the lift, and he asked me, ‘Tu Ronit se mila hai kya (Have you met Ronit)?’ I said, ‘Woh TV wala Ronit? Woh Balaji wala (Ronit from those Balaji TV serials)?’ He said, ‘Mil le, banda bahut interesting hai (Meet him, he is an interesting guy) maybe we can cast him for the uncle’s role’.”
Vikramaditya last film was the cyber-thriller CTRL. Ajay, on the other hand, will next be seen in the star-studded actioner Singham Again.