The New Year promises to come with a crop of new challenges for the impeccably talented Naseeruddin Shah, for whom 2017 starts of with Karan Johar’s production, OK Jaanu.
As he stars alongside Aditya Roy Kapur and Shraddha Kapoor’s landlord, who looks after his ailing wife, Naseer says, “I did it because it’s a remake of a Mani Ratnam film, with an interesting role for me. My part was played by Prakash Raj in the original.”
Danseuse and former chairperson of the Central Bureau of Film Certification, Leela Samson, who also played the landlord’s wife in the Tamil film, reprises her part in the Hindi remake. Naseer says he thoroughly enjoyed working with Leela. “Leela is absolutely delightful. She’ll be the surprise package of the film.”
Interestingly, Naseer has also worked with OK Jaanu’s directo, Shaad Ali’s father, Mauzaffar Ali in Umrao Jaan. Comparing father and son, Naseer unhesitatingly says he finds the son to be a better director. “Shaad, as a director, is much more on the ball than the older Ali,” he says.
Later in 2017, Naseer will be seen in an Indian adaptation of a Shakespearean play. No stranger to the Bard’s adaptations, Naseer is pointedly excited about this one. “The film is called The Hungry, and we just completed the shooting in Delhi. It’s adapted from one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, Titus Adronicus. It’s not well known, but it’s brilliant. The film is directed by a very bright young woman, Bornila Chatterjee.”
Perhaps the most intriguing of Naseer’s assignments this year is a Gujarati movie called Duh, about a child with a learning disability. Says Naseer, “It’s a children’s film, where I play a magician. It’s directed by Manish Saini and is his first movie.”
Surprisingly, this isn’t Naseer’s first Gujarati film. “I’ve done one of my most well known films, Ketan Mehta’s Bhavni Bhavai in Gujarati. I also did another Gujarati movie, Naseeb Ni Balihari, which was directed by Nimesh Desai. It was Paresh Rawal’s first movie and also starred Smita Patil and Om Puri — both gone now,” he reminisces.
