It still feels odd to add the word ‘Late’ along with the legendary actor Irrfan Khan. The actor who left us for his heavenly abode back in 2020, still lives in the hearts of his plethora of fans and friends, whose lives he had touched.
Irrfan Khan was not always seen in big-budget films but his roles and performances were always appreciated. Khan struggled for years doing small roles before he got his big break. He did a lot of small roles in TV and film back in the 90s. It was only with movies like Maqbool and Haasil that he set the foot in the industry and became a known name.
On late Irrfan Khan’s birth anniversary, here’s revisiting the time when his performance in Vishal Bhardwaj’s highly acclaimed film Maqbool left everyone in awe, including Bollywood veteran Naseeruddin Shah.
Did you know that Irrfan Khan was not the first choice for Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptation of Macbeth, ‘Maqbool’? The film, which featured Khan opposite Pankaj Kapur, Tabu, Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah, was earlier offered to Kay Kay Menon and at one point, even Kamal Haasan was in the mix.
At this time Khan had just done Haasil and was looking for his big break. It was because of his performance in Haasil that he landed the role in Maqbool. Khan once revealed the story behind his casting on Anupam Kher’s talk show, “Vishal cast me after watching Haasil.”
Khan fondly remembered his chance meeting with Bhardwaj. At that time, their kids studied in the same school. Khan asked him to watch Haasil during this meeting.
He then revealed, “I waited for him to call me after watching the film. The next day, I called him so he said I was just about to call you. Then he said, ‘Main Macbeth bana raha hun‘ (I am making Macbeth).” Naseeruddin Shah recounts Khan’s casting and calls it a ‘masterstroke’.
While writing an obituary for Irrfan, Naseeruddin Shah recalled a memory where Khan left him amazed and left him hanging between real-life and fiction.
He recounts, “There is this scene in the film between Maqbool and Kaka, played by Piyush Mishra. It’s the famous Shakespearean scene where Macbeth is confronted by Banquo’s ghost at the banquet. In Maqbool, when Kaka’s body is brought to the pyre, Irrfan kneels down in a show of grief and the dead body opens its eyes. When we were rehearsing the scene, Piyush was lying on the pyre. Irrfan sat down near him and I was standing behind him. I didn’t realise that the rehearsal had begun. After a while, Irrfan toppled over backwards. I reached out to support him. I assumed he’d lost his balance. And those morpankhi aankhen (peacock-feather-shaped eyes), as Ismat Chughtai describes Saadat Hasan Manto’s eyes, turned towards me and said: “Naseer bhai, I am trying to act. Why are you helping me?” I don’t think this has ever happened to me that I watched an actor perform and took it to be real.” He fondly remembers his dear friend.
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