Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan has said that he was offered the role of Langda Tyagi in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara just moments after his mother, veteran actor Sharmila Tagore, suggested he take up a Shakespeare adaptation like Othello.
“I was staying at the lovely Rambagh hotel and one day, I was sitting on the lawn in the morning, having breakfast, and my mom was talking to me and she said, ‘You’re doing well now, you’re acting well, I’m very pleased with how things are going. I think you should do Shakespeare, like ‘Othello or something.’ So, I was like, ‘That would be interesting, thanks mom.’ And I hung up,” Saif said in a recent interview.
“Just then, the phone rang and it was Bharadwaj saying, ‘I want to come and see you, I’ve ‘Othello’,” Saif told PTI.
Saif was shooting for Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 2007 film Eklavya: The Royal Guard in Jaipur, Rajasthan, at the time.
“I thought, ‘What is going on?’,” Saif further said.
Saif initially wanted to play the titular role in the film. Recalling the moment, he said he asked Bhardwaj if he could do it.
“He (Bhardwaj) said, ‘No, it’s not Othello. It’s Iago.’... He’s very good like this and said, ‘I find you very handsome looking and Othello is slightly complex to the way he looks. So, you can’t do that. But listen to what I have in mind.”
When asked why Bhardwaj cast him as the antagonist, Saif said, “He told me, ‘I saw Dil Chahta Hai, I think you can do it.’ I don’t know, he saw something evil in my portrayal of Sameer. So, we did it.”
Crediting the filmmaker for believing in him, Saif further noted, “Everyone was doubtful but he was very kind and supportive and helped me with the dialogues.”
“I did a lot of homework. I was on holiday in Maldives, people were like, ‘Why don’t you rehearse in the heartland?’ I was reading this script under an umbrella in the Maldives, learning all these lines and kept practicing. Then I came back,” he added.
Remembering the praise he received for his performance in the film, Saif said, “The film has done so much for me, and I’ll always be thankful. It’s expressed a certain range to a bunch of filmmakers, who would otherwise think that I can't do it. They’ve said, ‘okay, if he’s done that, then he can do this’.”
Omakara released in theatres on July 28, 2006. A Hindi adaptation of Othello, the film follows Omkara (Ajay Devgn), a powerful local enforcer in Uttar Pradesh, whose life unravels after he is led to believe that his partner Dolly (Kareena Kapoor) is unfaithful.
His trusted lieutenant Langda Tyagi (Saif) manipulates him through jealousy and suspicion, turning Omkara against Dolly and those around him.
The ensemble cast of the film also features Vivek Oberoi, Naseeruddin Shah, Bipasha Basu, Konkona Sen Sharma and Pankaj Tripathi.
On the work front, Saif is currently awaiting the release of his Netflix film Kartavya, set to premiere on May 15.
Directed by Pulkit, known for helming thriller movie Bhakshak, the upcoming project marks the second collaboration of Netflix and Red Chillies Entertainment after Aryan Khan’s The Ba***ds of Bollywood.