Katrina Kaif says she was initially upset that her role was cut from Bachna Ae Haseeno and she was offered New York by Aditya Chopra instead
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Even after achieving commercial success with several films, Katrina Kaif has often tried to do something that breaks the clutter. Something that is not just song and dance, where she is not this shy demure Bollywood heroine, but also playing a part that exacts something out of her.
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The first time she took that leap would be Namastey London, according to the actress. “Even though there was a certain comical and almost rom com-ish tone to the film, I think it was a great character. I just loved that story. It was just like that typical East meets West in the rom-com space. NRI chic and this Indian boy and I thought it was brilliant. I loved it, for me it was a phenomenal character,” the actress tells Mid-day during the latest Sit With Hitlist episode.
For many, the film New York would seem that kind of a leap for Katrina, considering it was a completely political film. “Definitely, for me, the film New York was a completely new language in cinema in the way that he was telling you the story. I will tell you a very interesting story of how I landed that film. Do you do remember this film called umm Bachna Ae Haseeno?”
How Katrina got cut from Bachna Ae Haseeno
The actress continues, “Initially there were four girls in the film, I was the fourth girl. That character got cut out of the film, at the script level. The film was becoming too long, Adi Chopra called me to the office, this was the first Yash Raj film I was cast in, which was a big thing for me and I was vying for a Yash Raj film for sometime. He calls me after being cast in film and he says, listen, the film is too long and we are going to have to cut this character. And I was like huh! You must be joking me!”
“It was a limited role in that film. Shortly later he called me for this film which, when I first heard the film, my response was kind of like, he has offered me this kind of small film with no songs and it’s artsy… Kabir Khan is like a documentary filmmaker and I was like, he takes away my big commercial film with Bachna Ae Haseeno and he has given me this art film. I was not very happy about it.”
Salman Khan was to be in Kabul Express?
Katrina reveals how Salman Khan encouraged her to take up New York. “The person who actually was super encouraging of me to do the film was Salman, because he had met Kabir Khan for his first film which was Kabul Express. He wanted him to be in that movie."
“I don’t know what happened there. Salman had really liked Kabir from that interaction, and he said, ‘I think this is going to be an incredible film and Kabir is going to be a great filmmaker. You should be excited about that film’, because I was a little angsty in my heart.
“I was like, there are no songs where is the scale. I very begrudgingly walked on to the set of New York. Singh is Kinng had just released, it was getting massive love and I walk in onto this, in my mind, slightly arty film and I was thinking, where are the lights, I don’t see any lights on the set, where is the camera, where is the crew, this is such a small crew.’ It seemed like a veryquaint production, that turned very quickly into when the film schedule wrapped in New York, it being the most incredible experience of my entire life up until date.”
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