Mumbai: Abhishek Banerjee is back in the limelight for his performance in two releases this week, Stree 2 and Vedaa. The actor also worked as a casting director before, and shared his experience when one of his casting projects went haywire. Talking to Siddharth Kannan in a new interview, the actor shared that he was kicked out from Agneepath, which was produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions because they were bringing in ‘Anurag Kashyap-jaise’ actors.
In the interview, the actor said: “Agneepath se humein nikaal diya tha. Agneepath ki casting hum log kar rahe the baad mein Jogi bhai aaye. Kyu nikal di kyuki woh casting unko pasand nahi aayi, Karan sir ko pasand nahi aayi. Hum log kuch zyada hi Anurag Kashyap-waale actors la rahe the jo unhe pasand nahi aya. Toh unhone bola, ‘Nikal jao humari film se!’ Hume laga career barbaad, khatam! Dharma se nikal gaye ab ho gaya! But thankfully bach gaye (We were fired from Agneepath. We were casting for Agneepath, it was then taken over by Jogi (Mallang) bhai. Why were we removed? Because Karan sir didn’t like our casting. We were casting Anurag Kashyap-type actors. He didn’t like it and said, get out of our film. We thought our career was over because we were thrown out of Dharma Productions. But thankfully, we survived).”
Agneepath was the remake of the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer, which released in 2012. The film was the directorial debut of Karan Malhotra, and starred Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Rishi Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt. It received good reviews upon release and was a box office success.
Meanwhile, Abhishek is earning praise for his performance in Stree 2. The film has been performing very well in India and across the globe and as per Sacnilk.com, the film has earned over ₹125 crore globally.
