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Actor Rajpal Yadav landed a three-line role in the film Shool, along with several of his National School of Drama graduates. While he was an unknown at the time in the world of films, he’d already done the television show Mungeri Ke Bhai Naurangilal. Little did he know that the show was popular in the interiors of north India, and that an unexpected incident on the sets of Shool would change how the crew viewed him.
In a conversation with Ashoke Pandit on his YouTube channel, Rajpal recalled that he landed the small role in Shool when Anurag Kashyap told him and other NSD graduates, including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, that Ram Gopal Varma was putting the film together as a producer, for his assistant E Niwas. Rajpal was given the role of a coolie, and left to shoot the film in Bihar. “The director told me very seriously, ‘Speak properly in front of Manoj Bajpayee’. And I’m thinking, ‘But I know him’.”
Rajpal continued, “We showed up in Motihari, but the entire crew was from Hyderabad. Around six or seven of us were put into a Mahindra-type vehicle, and as soon as I got out, I heard people screaming, ‘Arey Nauranghiya bhi hai’. Thousands of people had gathered to watch the shoot. Manoj Bajpayee had just done Satya, and Raveena Tandon had done ‘Akhiyon Se Goli Maare’. Even I was there just to watch them.”
Rajpal said that one of RGV’s cousins came over, and told everybody that the crowd ‘went mad because somebody named Nauranghiya came’. Manoj pointed at Rajpal and said, “But that’s him!” That’s when Rajpal realised that they were yelling for him. “I came to the set in a jeep with six others, I left in a car all to myself, just like Manoj Bajpayee and Raveena Tandon,” Rajpal recalled fondly.
Rajpal also took the opportunity to enhance his one-scene role into something more memorable, and plotted an improvisation with Manoj, who was game. “Even Anurag encouraged the improvisation, and didn’t let them cut. In the end, the three-line scene became a 13-line scene,” Rajpal said. Previously, Manoj had also narrated an incident from the shoot of Shool in Bettiah. He shared with The Lallantop, “I felt like there could have been a riot if people crossed the barricade and came inside. Raveena Tandon was a superstar and was at the top that time. My father also came to see her.”
In a recent interview, actor Imran Khan recalled a similar experience. He said that before his debut film Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na been released, he had started working on his follow-up, Kidnap. He wasn’t allowed to eat meat on set, and was made to sit in the heat on plastic stool. But when the trailer for Jaane Tu dropped, the crew’s demeanour changed, and he was served biryani in an airconditioned room.
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