Almost two decades since their wonderful collaboration in Monsoon Wedding [2001], Mira Nair signed Randeep Hooda for her magnum opus, A Suitable Boy, earlier this year. The auteur, who had zeroed in on Tanya Maniktala and Ishaan Khatter for the leads of the eight-part BBC series, was only too happy to have found her Billy Irani — a suave Calcutta-based gentleman in Vikram Seth's best-selling novella — in Hooda. However, what was to be a memorable professional reunion has apparently turned into a bitter experience. mid-day has learnt that days after the project went on floors in September, Hooda was shown the door owing to his alleged misbehaviour.

Mira Nair