Anurag Kashyap has not worked with Ranveer Singh since then due to his guilt. (Image: Instagram)
Anurag Kashyap said that he could not cast Ranveer Singh in Bombay Velvet after the film was sold for a higher price.
Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap became a household name after the success of his Gangs Of Wasseypur franchise. However, he is also known for Bombay Velvet, a film that didn’t work well at the box office despite a talented star cast including Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma. However, Anurag recently revealed in an interview that Ranveer Singh was very keen to do the film but he couldn’t be signed due to budget constraints. Anurag said that he has never worked with Ranveer over the guilt he feels about not casting him in Bombay Velvet.
Talking to Bollywood Bubble, Anurag said, “He really wanted to do Bombay Velvet. He had even memorized all the dialogues… I was not a part of the selling (of the film). When the film got sold at a high cost, it wasn’t sustainable (to cast Ranveer).” The film was then made with Ranbir Kapoor, who had already established himself in the industry by then.
“I tried very hard. I tried so hard that I even postponed the shoot of Bombay Velvet and shot Ugly, hoping things will get right in that time because Ranveer also, at that time, started doing Lootera. So I waited,” Anurag added. However, Anurag added, everyone advised him that he was “wrong in chasing” Ranveer for a high-budget film.
Talking about not having collaborated with the actor after that, Anurag said, “I have tried to but I also have my own guilt. I feel like I should have cut down my cost but I didn’t understand a lot of things back then, now I get that.”
He added, “There was a time when I reached out to him but he was dealing with his own issues and I was in a desperate phase so I said, ‘You deal with your things, I’ll move on’ but I keep in touch with him. He killed it in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani so I complimented him.”
Meanwhile, after a successful stint at the box office, Ranveer Singh’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani was quietly released on OTT earlier this week. The film is currently available to rent on Amazon’s Prime Video and will soon be available to stream for free. The OTT version of the film also features an extra 10 minutes which were cut from the theatrical version due to time constraints.