Bollywood beauty queen Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was thrown out of filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar's movie Heroine, which was later completed by Kareena Kapoor
It was called one of the biggest controversies in the history of Bollywood when Madhur Bhandarkar took many indirect digs at Aishwarya and termed her greedy. Aishwarya had signed the movie without informing him about her pregnancy.
Later, Madhur expressed his feeling by saying, "Today I am sitting alone in my office after the plugs being pulled off from my film Heroine... My conscience stands clear as I have been honest with my craft irrespective of the repercussions.'' ''No way would I have trampled my dream project on which I have given my sweat and blood for almost 1 1/2 years,'' he further added.
He also said the movie Heroine was the most ambitious project of his career. He said, "This is no normal film which can be shot in a couple of locations with a handful of actors. Heroine is a film that entails a huge canvas of around 40 locations in which heavy-duty scenes involving massive crowds are to be shot, adult content, the regular song and dance sequences and heavy-duty scenes involving hardcore physical exertion.''
''Today, when I know the condition of my then lead actress (Aishwariya) and I shudder at the thought what if instead of my associate she would be the one to be injured; I would have suffered a major guilt throughout my life if anything were to happen to her on my guard and direction.''
"The lead actress was required to smoke on screen....but even if she chose not to smoke for the camera, there are other actors smoking in the same frame entailing to passive smoking which would prove detrimental to a pregnant woman's health.''
"The actress would have informed the state of her health, an impending maternity.... The truth was hidden from us.''
Madhur said that the entire team of the film learnt from news channels like the rest of the world that the said actress was 4-months pregnant and she was due in November.
''The movie was announced in Cannes on 13th May while we commenced shooting on 7th June.... There was a gap of 24 days. Even if we had known the truth behind the state of the actress, things could have been reworked keeping the state of matters in mind accordingly and this crisis could have been averted.''
''I was in a state of total shock and depression... I had been working on the script for almost a year and a half....'' Madhur said.
On the work front, Aishwarya was last seen in Fanney Khan with Anil Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao. She will next be seen in Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan (son of Kaveri), a film based on the Tamil classic novel of the same name. The film has a massive cast, including Vikram, Karthi, Jayam Ravi, Keerthy Suresh and Amala Paul.
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