Akshay Kumar says Lara Dutta laughed when he suggested she play Indira Gandhi in BellBottom: ‘She refused to believe’

Actor Akshay Kumar has revealed that his BellBottom co-star Lara Dutta laughed in disbelief when he suggested she play the role of former prime minister Indira Gandhi in BellBottom. He added that Lara thought he was playing a prank on her as she ‘saw no similarity between the two’.

Speaking to a leading daily, Akshay Kumar said, “I did suggest Lara’s name for the role. For some reason, she was the first person who came to my mind. I remember calling her up and telling her about this film that I was doing and that we were casting for the role of Indira Gandhi in it. I wanted her to consider it. And she started laughing and refused to believe I was seriously asking her to consider it. For the longest time, she thought I was playing a prank as she saw no similarity between the two whatsoever. But then I explained to her what the role entailed and why I felt she could do justice to it.”

On shooting during the Covid-19 pandemic, he said, “Our producer Vashuji (Bhagnani), who shuttles between the UK and India, at that time was in the UK. I remember I was talking to him over the phone…And I randomly suggested to him that we shoot abroad in a bio-bubble. I kid you not, within 30 seconds, he said, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ It was all him, he believed he could pull it off and he did.”

Earlier, Lara Dutta in an interview with The Indian Express spoke about Akshay’s reaction to her look in the film. “Even when Akshay saw me for the first time as the character, I remember he sat next to me and kept staring at me. I was like ‘What is wrong with you? Why are you staring at me?’ He replied, ‘This is so strange. So uncanny’. So, such were the reactions on the sets of BellBottom,” she had said.

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Directed by Ranjit M Tewari, BellBottom follows an undercover RAW agent, who is on a mission to rescue over 200 hostages from a hijacked Indian plane. BellBottom also stars Vaani Kapoor and Huma Qureshi and released theatrically earlier this week.