MUMBAI: Film-maker Nikhil Advani has clarified that veteran actor Rishi Kapoor’s character in the forthcoming film D-Day is not modelled on Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted in India for suspected terror bids.
“I completely deny that Rishi ji is playing Dawood. He plays an exiled crime lord named Iqbal. If there are similarities to Dawood, it can’t be helped. All art forms basically need to borrow from real-life headlines. It doesn’t mean we are making a feature film on any specific person,” said Advani.
A recent report based on Kapoor’s interview to a daily claimed that the actor plays Dawood in the film. The interview triggered a panic attack among the film’s team who are now frantically trying to complete the post-production while avoiding trouble from crime syndicates.
According to a source, members of the cast, including Kapoor, Arjun Rampal and Irrfan Khan, were summoned a few days back to re-dub some of their more controversial lines. The director admits that the cast was called to do some additional dubbing but said, “The film is in live sync-sound. We have to dub some of the lines because the dialogues were drowned in action. That’s all.”
“Why is so much being made out of one character’s resemblance to someone we all know? I’m being asked how a director of such emotional films as Kal Ho Naa Ho, Salaam-e-Ishq and Patiala House can handle an action film,” said Advani.
“But there is much more to D-Day than just the action involving the extrication of a wanted criminal from Karachi. The drama and emotions are the mainstay, not just the action scenes,” he added.
D-Day is a raw and edgy thriller about two RAW agents played by Rampal and Irrfan being sent to Pakistan to bring back Iqbal for a trial by the Indian government.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 8th, 2013.
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