Abhishek Bachchan saved money for dad Amitabh Bachchan’s struggling business by reducing amount of sugar in crew’s tea: ‘CEO told me…’

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Abhishek said that because of his family’s legacy, most directors didn’t want to take the responsibility of launching him as an actor. Over two years, he faced several rejections, which is when he decided to write his own screenplay with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. They pitched the idea to Amitabh, who wasn’t impressed. “People were just not interested in working with me. I think I met all the directors I could’ve met, and they all very respectfully declined, saying, ‘We don’t want the responsibility of launching you’… I was getting demoralised, and Rakeysh Mehra was only getting ad offers, so we wrote a script ourselves called Samjhauta Express in two months. I was playing a terrorist who comes in search of his father. Once the script was ready, we took it to dad to pitch it to him… We narrated the whole script, there was silence afterwards. My father looked at us, and said, ‘Boys, bakwas script hai, get out’.”

Abhishek said that his father was probably feeling a little guilty for being so dismissive, which is why he invited him along for an awards event. It was there that Abhishek caught the eye of JP Dutta, who called him in for a meeting a couple of days later. He’d eventually be cast in the film Refugee, which featured fellow debutante Kareena Kapoor. Abhishek said that Rakeysh Mehra is terrible at narrations, which is why he turned down Rang De Basanti when he was approached with it. He learned his lesson, and agreed to do Delhi-6 without reading the script at all.