"no one wanted to do it."
Thugs of Hindostan may have opened to massive box office numbers, but its fallout revealed deeper creative conflicts, especially around casting.
Aamir Khan has admitted he was never satisfied with the final cut.
But he has now revealed that the role played by Fatima Sana Shaikh was offered to several top actresses before her.
Aamir said: “When we were casting for it, no other female actor said yes to this part. Deepika [Padukone], Alia [Bhatt], Shraddha [Kapoor], they all refused.
“That film was offered to the entire industry but no one wanted to do it.”
On why they turned it down, Aamir said it could have been because the role was poorly written.
The film, which paired him romantically with Fatima, ran into early objections behind the scenes. Director Vijay Krishna Acharya and producer Aditya Chopra were hesitant about the pairing.
Defending the pairing, Aamir said: “They decided that we won’t have a romantic track between you and her because she was your daughter in Dangal, how can she play your girlfriend here? Audience will reject this.
“I am not her father in real life, and neither am I her boyfriend in real life. We are making a movie.”
He stated that Amitabh Bachchan and Waheeda Rehman have played mother and son, and have also played lovers in films.
“Audience is not this stupid that they will think that he is the actual father. We are underestimating our audience if we say that.”
Fatima had tested for the role and was eventually selected. However, the removal of the romantic track left her character, Zafira, without the depth the script originally intended.
Aamir implied that had the original vision remained intact, including the full character arc, Thugs of Hindostan might have resonated better with audiences.
He also revealed that the script of Thugs of Hindostan kept getting modified.
After it was made, he got a call from Aditya Chopra and was told:
“I have seen the first cut and it is a brilliant film. You have no idea what you have made.”
Aamir Khan said that when he watched the film, he was “shocked” because he found it to be “really bad”.
“I told them I didn’t understand it and at first, they thought I was joking. I told them this won’t work for a day.”
He added that they went on discussing the film for the next 6-8 months and he would “fight with them every day that we have made it all wrong. This is structurally incorrect”.
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