Exclusive: Director Anubhav Sinha was upset with Rajiv Thakur auditioning for IC 814
In an exclusive interview with IndiaToday.in, Rajiv Thakur revealed that director Anubhav Sinha was initially upset with casting director Mukesh Chhabra over his audition. Read on to find out why.
Rajiv Thakur stunned everyone with his acting in Anubhav Sinha’s latest directorial venture IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. The series tells the story of the incident that took place in the 1980s. The hijacking of IC 814 in 1999 has attracted both positive reviews and controversyIn an exclusive interview with IndiaToday.in, she shared that director Anubhav Sinha was actually upset with her casting in the series initially. In fact, he even ‘scolded’ the casting director Mukesh Chhabra. She also revealed how the cast of the show, including actor Dia Mirza, congratulated her for her work on social media.
Rajiv Thakur said that he was looking for different kinds of roles, but everyone kept seeing him in comic roles. When he got a call from Mukesh Chhabra’s office to audition for IC 814, he was sure that he would fail, but he took it as a learning process.
“When I finally did that scene, I was selected. However, Anubhav sir was upset and even scolded Mukesh bhai. He said, ‘Why did you have to take Rajiv’, as he was confused. ‘He gave such a good audition but this is the role of a terrorist, I don’t want people to laugh remembering his previous work’, sir told him. That’s when Mukesh bhai said that I had cleared the audition and asked, ‘If you won’t give him a chance even after that, then who will?’ That’s when I finally got the role,” the actor recalled, getting emotional.
Rajiv Thakur said, “Everyone is very surprised and that makes me very happy. I feel like I have got a new life.” The comedian plays the role of terrorist Ibrahim Akhtar aka ‘Chief’ in the Netflix series.
Rajeev enacted the scene where he asked the pilot (Vijay Varma) to fly the plane during the audition. He said that he said this dialogue in a very villainous tone, but he was asked to keep it like a natural conversation.
“I thought this was my weakest audition and I thought I passed it. I really think it’s very important to audition in front of a casting team, because they really help you get the right tone. I’m also a director’s actor, and I hope more filmmakers will look at me in a different light after this,” he told us during the interview.
Rajeev Thakur appears on The Great Indian Kapil ShowRajeev said that he is getting messages from people who have found him after IC 814. He said that he had enjoyed this kind of love 15 years ago too when the Laughter Challenge started. Rajeev said that many people did not even recognize him until the series ended.
“Initially I was a bit sad that we were not able to promote the show and neither were we on the posters. However, now I feel it had shock value and hence, it got me more love. I am not used to hearing so many compliments, the best part was when the cast approached me,” Rajeev recalled.
He said, “Artists like Kumud Mishra and Divyendu Bhattacharjee, who understand this art, appreciated my work. Gajraj Rao told me to enjoy the moment. I was also surprised when I woke up one morning to Dia Mirza’s message on Instagram. It was so sweet of her to search my profile and drop a text. Honestly, for a moment I thought it was a fake profile before I saw the number of followers she had. I am so grateful that I could see this day in my career.”
IC 814: Kandahar hijacking‘Dabangg 3’, which is streaming on Netflix, also stars Pankaj Kapur, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrita Puri and Manoj Pahwa.