Hansal Mehta recalls working with Manoj Bajpayee on 'Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar': He was a pain

Hansal Mehta and Manoj Bajpayee

Director Hansal Mehta has said that actor Manoj Bajpayee was difficult to work with. The director-actor duo had worked together in the comedy-drama 'Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!!' which was released in the year 2000. Mehta said that now when he mentions it to Bajpayee he brushes it off saying he was too young at that time.

Hansal Mehta was speaking about his experience working with Manoj Bajpayee during his appearance at a year-end roundtable organised by Cinema Express. Hansal said that he enjoys working with people he gets along with and the actors need not be effusive to impress him. "It's about the connection that you feel. Manoj has major mood swings. We made Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! in 2000, and he was a pain in that film," he recalled.

Hansal who is now a good friend of Manoj further said, "But at heart, he's a nice guy. He's not a bad person. You get that vibe. When we were working together, I used to get very irritated. I would ask, ‘Manoj, why are you behaving like this?' That was the time when Manoj would take the character and just go. I don't know how he decided that the character should be irritable, but he thrust it on everyone. Everyone used to run away from him. Saurabh (Shukla) used to be like, ‘I went to speak to him and he was mean. What's wrong with him?'"

The director then revealed that actor Rajkummar Rao, with whom he has done six projects, was thrust upon him by director Anurag Kashyap and casting director Mukesh Chhabra.

On the work front, Mehta is looking forward to the release of his film 'The Buckingham Murders' starring Kareena Kapoor Khan. This is the director's first collaboration with the actress. "It was an absolute joy to work with her. She is such a good actor," he begins. The noir thriller, which sees Kapoor playing a cop, marks the confluence of two different cinematic sensibilities - while the actor's filmography is dominated by mainstream masala offerings, the director leans towards raw and hard-hitting movies. So, what happens when the two worlds come together? "One thing I can say is you will see a new Kareena in the film. We had a very good time shooting the film. With her, it's the same kind of chemistry that I have with Rajkummar, Pratik, Mohammed Zeeshan [Ayyub] and Karishma [Tanna],"Mehta had said about Kareena talking to Mid-day.