Imtiaz Ali: ‘Ranbir narrated the story of Rockstar to me!’

On the latest episode of Sit With Hitlist, Imtiaz Ali shares how he met Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt for the first time and ended up casting them in Rockstar and Highway

You’d imagine a director reading out his script, beat by beat, to an actor. But what if we told you it was the other way around with Rockstar? In the latest episode of Mid-day’s Sit With Hitlist series, director Imtiaz Ali recalls how he had approached Ranbir Kapoor for a different film, but they ended up reviving his long-forgotten script that had done the rounds.

When Imtiaz was chatting with Ranbir, he said, “Sir, I’ve heard that you had a film where this guy says I want to become a musician…” Whatever Ranbir remembered from what he had heard, he narrated to Imtiaz.  

In another episode of Sit With Hitlist, which featured Alia Bhatt, the actress recalled how she chased down Imtiaz because she was really keen on working with him. That’s her memory of it. Imtiaz remembers it differently, though. He recalls how he had met a young Alia before Highway at a movie screening.

Much before he met or worked with Mahesh Bhatt’s daughter and now son-in-law, Imtiaz had worked with the maverick filmmaker. He shares a funny anecdote about his first meeting with Mahesh Bhatt, which was extremely brief and confounding. “He said, ‘Oh, you’re Imtiaz, I saw aisa-waisa, this scene was good, that scene was not so good, blah-blah-blah… You are directing my next film, now you can go because I have no time for you’,” Imtiaz recalled.

A conversation with Imtiaz Ali had to include his iconic film, Jab We Met, and the character of Geet. The filmmaker opened up on how Geet, played by Kareena Kapoor, ended up being a Punjabi character.

Imtiaz is also one among a bunch of talented individuals, who were studying in Delhi around the same time, became friends, moved to Mumbai and started making or acting in films. When they came to Bollywood, they were told movies were not working. So they adopted a ‘fake it till you make it’ approach.

"When we came, we were told, nobody knows what it working. And we guys, we weren’t trained or skilled, we had no idea. We were drifters and losers. And we started saying, we know what’s working… Fake it until you make it and we are still trying to make it,” he said.

Stay tuned for the full interview, out on August 17.

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