Amitab Bachchan dumps the baritone

After Agneepath and Paa, Amitabh Bachchan has let go of his voice for his upcoming film Gulabo Sitabo, co-starring Ayushmann Khurrana.

For an actor whose baritone sends the audience into raptures, changing the voice can be a big risk. “But the character he plays in the film required him not to speak in his original voice. Bachchan plays the role of an old landlord called Mirza who lives up north and hence the voice had to go with the age of the character as well. Bachchan had played a much older man in 102 Not Out, but didn’t change his voice much for that film. But here he has,” says a source.

When Bachchan first came into Bollywood with Saat Hindustani — one of the first films he shot for — Reshma Aur Shera saw him in the role of a mute lad. But after the Hindi film industry discovered his baritone, they didn’t want to change it. “So when Mukul Anand decided to change it for Agneepath, there was a big hullabaloo.

The audience was upset, they wanted Amitabh’s voice back and so the makers released another version with Amitabh’s original voice,” recollects film historian Imtiaz Baghdadi.

Bachchan had also changed his voice and softened it a bit when he played the character of Auro in the film Paa, who is a 13-year-old affected by progeria.