Abhishek Bachchan: ‘Every director I met said they didn't want to take the responsibility of launching me’

Abhishek Bachchan has detailed his struggles of getting his first film in the early 2000s. In the Hindi Actors Roundtable on Galatta Plus, Abhishek revealed that despite film magazines proclaiming that Amitabh Bachchan's son is gearing up for his debut, no filmmaker wanted to cast him. (Also Read: Salman Khan and Abhishek Bachchan greet each other with a hug at Anand Pandit's birthday bash. Watch)

What Abhishek said

“There was a lot of chatter, excitement about me joining (the film industry). Not because of me, but because of the kid I was. But contrary to that, people were not interested in working with me. I think I met all the directors I could have met, and they all very respectfully declined saying, ‘We don’t want the responsibility of watching you,'” Abhishek said at the roundtable.

Abhishek then recalled how he was cast in his debut movie. He began developing a period film, then titled Samjhauta Express, with a friend and ad filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, who couldn't get any actor in his directorial debut. Abhishek grew his moustache and beard for the part, but when the two pitched it to Amitabh Bachchan for him to produce it under his banner ABCL, he said the script is “bakwas.”

How Abhishek got his first film

In order to boost his son's morale, Amitabh took Abhishek along to the Filmfare Awards, filmmaker JP Dutta spotted him. He'd won the Best Film award the same night for the blockbuster Border, and approached Abhishek a couple of days later for his next, on a Mughal descendant who was the son of Bahadur Shah Zafar. While that film didn't materialise, JP eventually cast Abhishek in his 2000 cross-border romance Refugee, opposite fellow newcomer Kareena Kapoor.

Abhishek also recalled that after hearing it from his father that the script of Samjhauta Express was “bakwas,” Rakeysh went back home, downed a bottle of alcohol, and “revenge-wrote” the script of Aks, which went on to be his directorial debut and starred Amitabh himself.

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