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.
“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 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.”
In order to boost his son’s morale, Amitabh took Abhishek along to the Filmfare Awards, and 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 materialize, JP eventually cast Abhishek in his 2000 cross-border romance ‘Refugee’, opposite fellow newcomer Kareena Kapoor.
