Actor Manoj Bajpayee spoke about the one week of turmoil that he experienced when the film Satya was shut down following the murder of media baron Gulshan Kumar in 1997. He said that the film’s original producer got cold feet and backed out, leaving the project in the lurch. But director Ram Gopal Varma was determined to not concede defeat, and he found a new producer a week later. The film, set in Mumbai underworld, established Manoj as a force to be reckoned with.
In an interview with Sushant Sinha on YouTube, Manoj opened up about the hardships he faced when he moved to Mumbai and struggled to find work. He said that he was paid Rs 1.5 lakh for Satya, which he thought was a fair deal because it was a major opportunity. But just when his life was beginning to turn around, Gulshan Kumar was gunned down by underworld elements.
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“When I got Satya, I didn’t tell anybody. Not even my roommate. I was always paranoid that the movie might get cancelled, which is what briefly happened,” he recalled. He continued, “Gulshan Kumar was murdered five days after we began shooting. The film was halted because the producer got scared. Gulshan Kumar’s murder was a huge incident in the industry, and we were making a movie about the Mumbai mafia. The producer got so scared, he shut it down. Our careers, which were just about to begin, were brought to an abrupt halt.”
Manoj added, “After about a week, Ram Gopal Varma found Bharat Shah. And then filming began again. We gave Satya our all. That one week was very difficult for us all. None of us had any idea what to do. Satya was our only hope. That uncertainty was very depressing, very frustrating. I had decided that I would not lose hope until Ram Gopal Varma says that it’s over. But he never conceded defeat, he would only say that we’re pausing temporarily. After eight days, we got the good news.”
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Gulshan Kumar’s murder actually ended up shaping the very core of Satya. In his autobiography Guns & Thighs, RGV recalled what went through his mind when he was told about the killing. “If Gulshan Kumar woke up at 7 o’clock, then at what time would the killer have woken up? Did he tell his mom to wake him up because he had a shooting to carry out? Did he have his breakfast before committing the crime or after?… Then it suddenly struck me that you always hear about gangsters only when they either kill or die. But what do they do in between? That was the thought which eventually resulted in Satya.”
Satya remains one of the most influential films in Hindi movie history, and is responsible for launching the careers of several people involved.
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