“Ridley Scott emailed me. He wanted to cast Nana Patekar for the role of Mark Strong in Body of Lies. I went back to Nana Patekar. He asked about the role and refused to do the film because He was not prepared to play the role of a terrorist,” Anurag said in an interview.
In the same interview, Anurag also shared his experience of working together Abhishek Bachchan And added that Junior Bachchan was very brash during his initial phase. It started when he recalled an incident during the shooting of the television show Yudh With Amitabh Bachchan,
“He is a very hardworking person. He is cultured, loves to eat. But he was very cruel in the beginning. He used to make fun of everything, didn’t take things seriously. But people grow, and he grows. That Abhishek and the Abhishek I have worked with in Manmarziyaan are two completely different people,” the filmmaker told Lallantop.
Talking about Amitabh, Anurag said that the megastar was always open to constructive criticism. “He takes criticism well. I saw he was delivering a typical Amitabh Bachchan-style performance, and I wanted something more genuine, and that’s what I told him,” he said.