'He Understood This After He Wept': Mira Nair On Not Casting Irrfan Khan As Salim In Salaam Bombay

Mira Nair, who worked with the actor in “Salaam Bombay!”, “The Namesake” recalled meeting Irrfan for the first time at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi.

Irrfan died in April 2020 following a battle with a rare form of cancer.

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New Delhi: Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu -- known for films such as "Birdman" and "The Revenant" -- was looking for an "Indian everyman" for a project and filmmaker Mira Nair says she suggested Irrfan Khan's name, but it was not meant to be.

According to Nair, Inarritu was looking for an Indian actor for one of his projects and happened to ask her for a recommendation.

"I remember well when I had visited him (Irrfan) he was really ailing but still fighting... My other friend, the great filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu had said, 'I'm really looking for this Indian everyman'.

"I said, 'There are many but there's one great one'. And it was going to be Irrfan... But such is life," the 66-year-old director said on Tuesday night during a session at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in Mumbai.

Irrfan died in April 2020 following a battle with a rare form of cancer.

Nair, who worked with the actor in “Salaam Bombay!”, “The Namesake”, and her short in the anthology film, “New York I Love You”, recalled meeting Irrfan for the first time at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi.

She felt that he was the perfect choice for the role of one of the key characters, Salim, in “Salaam Bombay!". But she later realised that casting him in that role would not be correct given the plot of the film. He eventually appeared in a small role in the 1988 film, which marked his acting debut.

"Salaam Bombay!", which was also Nair's filmmaking debut, is known for realistically depicting the daily life and struggle of children living in Mumbai slums.

"I was interested in street kids playing with themselves. It was an amalgamation of street kids and actors, that’s when I went to the National School Drama and met 18-year-old Irrfan Khan. I was like, 'He is the man!'. I asked him and he dropped out of NSD. We all, including Irrfan, Raghubir Yadav, our cinematographer and street kids (sometimes) lived together in an empty flat in Peddar Road (South Mumbai).

"Irrfan was six-feet-four and these kids were malnourished. They reached his torso. He was cast in my head as Salim, one of the main kids. We did a workshop but visually I couldn’t see them in a frame because Irrfan would tower over them, even though he was an amazing street kid.” Nair said it was "very difficult" to recast that role in "Salaam Bombay!", but she did so after promising to collaborate with Irrfan on a full-length film later.

“One of the very difficult things, which one has to do, one has to respect intuition and correctness. He understood (this) after he wept. I just told him, ‘Irrfan bhai I can’t do this, I can’t see you as Salim because you don’t fit now with the rest of the four’. There’s one scene that he could play and he played the part with great brilliance.

"He said, ‘Mira, you owe me’. I said, ‘I owe you forever’. It took me 15 years to find Ashok in ‘The Namesake’. It took just a phone call and he was ready. We remained great friends right from ‘Salaam Bombay!’. He did not need any explanation.” The director said she enjoys working with both actors and non-actors depending on the needs of the film.

Citing the example of her 2001 movie “Monsoon Wedding”, Nair said the only person she was keen to work with was veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah. Later, she cast others including Shefali Shah and Tillotama Shome, then a newcomer.

For the role of Shashi aunty, played by actor Kamini Khanna, Nair had initially cast one of her childhood friends, who later backed out of the project.

“I went walking in Vasant Vihar park (in Delhi) and I saw a woman in salwar- kameez and sneakers, I followed her. I asked her if she had acted, she said, ‘Yes, in a music video’. I asked her if she could come to my house. I took out Shashi aunty scenes and started reading with her. Her name is Kamini Khanna and she got the role opposite Kulbhushan Kharbanda. Later, she moved to Mumbai and has played Shashi aunty (kind of) roles about 18 times." "Sometimes, it (casting) happened instinctively and out of necessity. I’m comfortable with non-actors. You have the beauty of working with pros opposite non-actors, like Denzel Washington opposite Sarita Chaudhary (in ‘Mississippi Masala’). She was a film student then, I loved her lack of vanity, look and her intelligence. The alchemy that happens between someone who knows the tricks of the trade and someone who doesn’t happen… I look anywhere where the spirit can take me,” she added. 

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