Did You Know Manoj Bajpayee ‘Did Not Buy’ Saif Ali Khan’s Underprivileged Act In ‘Aarakshan’? Here’s Why

Saif Ali Khan was last seen in 2023’s ‘Adipurush’, which tanked at the box office. He will next be seen in the Jr NTR-starrer ‘Devara’. 

Recently, during a chat with Film Companion, Saif Ali Khan got candid about his previous films over the course of his career, and talked about the time when he shared the screen with Manoj Bajpayee in Prakash Raj’s 2011 film, ‘Aarakshan’. In the film, Saif featured as a man who is rejected for a prestigious job because of caste discrimination. However, do you know Manoj didn’t ‘buy it for a second’ when Saif’s character was sharing the pain of being discriminated against? Well, yes, and it was because of Saif’s actual royal lineage.

Laughing while recalling the moment, Saif added, “I did Aarakshan. I did a scene with him where I was telling him how much I have suffered, I have been so underprivileged in my life, and he was… after the cut, he said, ‘I don’t buy it for a second.’. He’s like, ‘Nawab saab, nahi’ (laughs)’. He didn’t buy it for a second.”

Talking about another anecdote about working with Manoj on JP Dutta’s 2003 film ‘LOC Kargil’, Saif shared how the two drank to an extent that they “nearly went blind.” Saif added, “We were holed up in some mountainside with JP, and I was in his room. I said, ‘Have you got anything to drink?’ He said, ‘I have this rum’ and it said Hercules XXX rum which we drank and nearly went blind,” and quipped, “I love Manoj.”

In the same interview, Saif shared another hilarious anecdote from his early film days when Aditya Chopra held up cue cards for him. He shared how he knew how to speak the Hindi language, but he was just conscious about it, probably because of his education in the UK. Directed by Yash Chopra, ‘Parampara’ was Saif’s debut film, and it had an ensemble cast including Sunil Dutt, Vinod Khanna, Aamir Khan, Neelam, Raveena Tandon, among others. 

Saif, who has had a career spanning 30 years now, has now hinted that he might reunite with wife Kareena Kapoor in an upcoming project.