Filmmaking is a tricky business. Even trickier is casting for these films. At times, you find a person apt at the word go, but sometimes, there is a cast lock that gets changed or dropped as the film progresses. But one needs to do it with dignity. Otherwise, there are people who end up getting hurt, and one such person is Panchayat Season 3’s, Pankaj Jha!
Pankaj Jha made an entry to the Amazon Prime Video’s show last season as Vidhayak Ji, and this time, it will be him vs Jitendra Kumar’s Sachiv Ji. Recently, in an interview, Jha opened up about a chapter of his life that was not well known.
The Panchayat actor sat down with Lallantop with a heartfelt talk where he talked about the struggle stories often shared by actors. He even confirmed he was a part of Gangs of Wasseypur‘s initial casting till he was dropped.
Recalling the unceremonious dropping by Casting director Mukesh Chhabra, the actor said, “I was going to do Wasseypur, and I got a call from MC (Mukesh Chhabra). I was in Patna, so I returned after a couple of days. By then, he’d got someone else to do the character I was supposed to play… It was the role of the Sultan (from Gangs of Wasseypur). I asked him why, but… After that, I didn’t get a call from that production house.” Later, as we all know, that it was Pankaj Tripathi played Sultan and immortalized the character.He even talked about how actors glorify their struggle stories but internally are dealing with ego hassles. The Panchayat actor revealed, “I don’t like the word ‘struggle’. If you’ve chosen to follow your passion, you should enjoy it, shouldn’t you? And as we’ve seen often in the industry, people like to glamourize their struggles. Some people say they sold potatoes; others say they lived in a tiny house, and some say they stole another actor’s slippers. I feel every situation is a learning experience.“
He further added, “These people have complexes; they have huge egos. They get upset if you don’t greet them or if you voice your opinions. They get so upset that they refuse to work with you again, and they tell their friends not to work with you either. It’s happened to me.”
A lot of people think that the Panchayat actor’s ‘stole another actor’s slippers’ is an indirect jibe at Pankaj Tripathi, who once shared the story about how he stole Manoj Bajpayee’s slippers when he was working in a hotel.