At age 56, one of Asia’s finest actors Naseeruddin Shah has a major career problem. He’s being largely offered the films that are rejected by Amitabh Bachchan.
This embarrassing state of affairs after having delivered a solid success A Wednesday at the boxoffice is quite intolerable to Naseer whose follow-up to A Wednesday is Jagmohan Mundra’s Shoot On Sight,a film which was first offered to….you guessed it!....Mr Bachchan!
One would think the success of A Wednesday would bring a radical change to the film industry’s attitude towards the awesome Naseer.
But no such luck.
"There’s no change at all. I’m still being offered films turned down by Mr Bachchan. In fact I’m surprised that A Wednesday proved a survivor. I thought it’d get killed!" says Naseer a tad wrily.
But isn’t he being slightly cynical in his opinion that all the offers coming his way first go to the Big B?
Naseer is pretty positive about this being the truth. "It doesn’t take too much imagination to know whom a role is written for when the character being offered to me is described as ’a towering personality with a baritone.’"
That isn’t all. Naseer even gets offers for characters with physical attributes defined by the Big B’s personality. "One script actually said ’with a neat white goatee’. Can it get any clearer? I can show you the scripts. And these scripts don’t even bother to disguise whom they really want for the part. They feel I should be ’honoured’ to be getting these roles!"
It isn’t as if Naseer is resentful. But he is well within his rights to wonder why he has not been able to stake a claim to an individual and unique position in the film industry after 30 years of superlative performances.
In fact the Big B recently said he wished to share screen space with Naseer, an eventuality that hasn’t occurred after so many years in the industry and careers that started at about the same time.
Laughs Naseer, "While I am getting all these rejects of Mr Bachchan there’s one role that I rejected and he eventually accepted. It’s Kaizad Gustad’s Boom."
Ask Naseer why he rejected that one. "It stank," comes the prompt and straight reply.
But all said and done Naseer is proud of Shoot On Sight. "I play a Muslim cop in Britain whose loyalty is questioned after the acts of terrorism in the country. Again, this is a theme very close to my heart."
