Saif Ali Khan says he refused to go naked for Omkara: ‘I should’ve done it, I would have been first butt of Bollywood onscreen’

Omkara marks one of the best films of actor Saif Ali Khan with his character as Langda Tyagi still remembered. However, did you know all the other crazy/genius ideas director Vishal Bharadwaj had for it? On a recent episode of No Filter Neha, Saif revealed an instance from the film and the scene he regrets not doing.

Vishal came up with a brilliant idea on how to convey an entire page of dialogue without saying anything. “Vishal Bharadwaj is a lovely director and it was a really clever scene because there’s this bit in Omkara where I had this one page of dialogue where I say ‘this Omkara fellow, he’s not made me the Baahubali, I’ll bloody show him, I’ll anoint myself the Baahubali, I’m going to kill everyone’. And he said ‘Listen I think this scene is too talky and this is cinema so we can do all this without any lines’. So, I said, ‘what do you mean?’”

“He said ‘You’re standing there in front of the mirror in the dark and the camera is coming close to you. You are looking at the mirror and you break it and it shatters. In the shattered mirror, I see your schizophrenic face and because you broke the mirror, your hand is bleeding. You anoint yourself with the blood. So that says it all, you don’t have to say any dialogues’ and I thought ‘Jesus, this man is a genius’ because that’s cinema, right? He’s taken a page of dialogue and converted into one shot,” he said.

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Saif said that Vishal wanted him to go naked for a scene but the actor put up a difficult condition for it. “So, he said, ‘in fact, I think you should do it naked’. I said, ‘what?’ He said, ‘ya it’ll look good, you’re standing there naked with your back to the camera’. He said don’t worry it will be very dimly lit, like the movie. So, I said ‘listen, you and Tassaduq (director of photography) stand there with me naked while you direct me and I will stand there naked. I don’t mind, I’ll do it’. He said ‘I’m not directing you naked’. I said ‘arre, if you’re not going to be naked then why should I be naked’. So, wasn’t. But in retrospect, I should’ve done it, it was just too new an idea. I think after John Abraham, showed his half butt, I would’ve been the first butt of Bollywood on screen,” he said. Saif was referring to a shot of John Abraham from Dostana, in which he was seen walking out of the ocean with his shorts way below the waist.

Omkara also starred Ajay Devgn and Saif’s wife, actor Kareena Kapoor Khan. Vivek Oberoi, Konkana Sen Sharma and Bipasha Basu were also parts of the film, based on William Shakespeare’s play Othello.

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