Every actor who makes his debut has a huge wishlist of directors they want to collaborate with and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s name appears on all. While working with SLB is a dream come true, he is also a taskmaster. The director doesn’t okay a take until he’s satisfied and a lot of times, our actors go through a tough time. Something similar had happened with Ranbir Kapoor who made his Bollywood debut with Saawariya in 2007.
Recently Ranbir was interviewed by film critic Anupama Chopra and in the interaction, he revealed that for the popular song Jab Se Tere Naina, he gave close to 100 takes.
Ranbir said,
I started with Sanjay Leela Bhansali and he doesn’t do anything less than 45 takes. So even if I had to turn my head, I probably had to give 50 takes. There was a shot in this so-called ‘towel song’ Jab Se Tere Naina, where I had to roll back on this chair and fall down and the towel had to fall in a certain way with my leg showing and there was one shot where I was lying down laughing and I had to get up and sing a song and he’s very particular about what beat you catch, he’s a very musical director – you fall on this beat, you lift your head here, you laugh here – everything is musical. I did 45 or 50 takes one day and my back really broke. The next morning when I came back, he said, ‘No, I’ve not got it’ and I had to do another 70 takes.
Wow, that’s some serious stuff, Ranbir.
Now we know the secret behind all those amazing shots in all the SLB films!