Why Jaideep Ahlawat had refused to do ‘Maharaj’?

Junaid Khan, Aamir Khan’s son, made his acting debut with ‘Maharaj’, which released on Netflix last month. The film is a true story based on Saurabh Shah’s Gujarati novel. In the film Junaid plays the role of journalist and social reformer Karsandas Mulji, who investigates and exposes the misdeeds of Vaishnavite priests, including Jadunath Maharaj (Jaideep Ahlawat). Prior to its release, the film faced some legal trouble from a certain section of Vaishnavite Pustimargi sect. However, later the court cleared the film for release.

Director of the film Siddharth P Malhotra said that though the film hardly had any pre-release promotions, yet it has been receiving good feedback worldwide. ‘Maharaj’ has provided a good launch vehicle to Junaid in the industry. Jaideep, too, is being appreciated for his negative act in the film.

Siddharth revealed that Jaideep was not keen to play the role of Jadunath Maharaj and had, in fact, refused to do it initially. Narrating the story behind casting Jaideep, Siddharth said, “When it came to the title role of ‘Maharaj, the only person we could think of, God bless his soul, was the late Irrfan Khan. There is nobody else who could have played this role but Irrfan. But I feel there is only one actor in this entire cinema industry who can match that level of performance, and he is Jaideep. He can literally do anything. He is one of the best actors that we have in the country.”

Siddharth went on to say that “convincing Jaideep to do this role was a tough one, because initially he said, ‘This is a tough role, I don’t know how to play it’. Then we had to do a narration with him, explain to him what our take on ‘Maharaj’ is, why we feel that he should play it, and what are the various layers in his character and how we are looking at him. Finally, we are very, very grateful that sir agreed and he is getting, rightfully so, all the love that he always gets for every film.”

Jaideep had to go through a drastic physical transformation for his role and admitted that it was not an easy task for him. He said, “First of all, the physical transformation was really painful – all five and a half months of it. But I thank my trainer Prajot Shetty, he is an amazing guy. Once we locked down on the script, I started working out. It was during the lockdown period, and being from Haryana, I was used to eating around 10 parathas a day. But Prajot cut it all down from my diet. I used to work out twice a day at a gym in the studio.”

Giving an example of Jaideep’s dedication to the role, Siddharth said, “There is a beautiful story behind his entry scene in the film, which we shot almost a year later. By then he had already moved on to another project and he had gained some weight. So, I called him and said, I have to shoot the entry scene, and once he told me about his problem I said, no worries. I have seen lots of things which were possible with VFX. But he refused, saying, ‘I have worked very hard to get that body, I can’t start with a fake body in my first scene’. He asked for three months to get back into shape to do that scene. I said that it was just a matter of a day’s shoot, but he insisted on getting his body back. It took three months for a one-day shoot, but the scene came out really well.”

‘Maharaj’ is produced by YashRaj Studio and it also features Sharvari Wagh, Shalini Pandey and others.