Actor Manu Rishi Chaddha said that he has always abided by the principle of accepting whatever he is offered for his work, even when he is called upon to write films. He intended on continuing this strategy when Anil Kapoor called him to write the dialogues for his daughter’s film, Aisha. But Anurag Kashyap jumped into the equation, and told him not to accept anything less than the ‘huge’ amount that he was going to suggest on his behalf.
Manu Rishi recalled the anecdote in an interview on the Red Mike YouTube channel. He said that after working on the Netflix film Rajma Chawal, for which he drew from his experiences in Old Delhi, he decided that he will not write films for anybody else again. “Somebody told me I have such a trove of stories, and compared me to Manto. For a while, I actually started believing it. Because Delhi has a lot of stories; it isn’t just Aisha. Although I wrote the dialogues for Aisha as well.”
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He continued, “The Delhi shown in Aisha wasn’t my Delhi. I did that movie because Anil Kapoor called me up and said that they needed my voice. Anurag asked me how much I was planning on charging, and when I told him the number I had in mind, he told me not to accept anything below a certain figure. I told him, ‘This is a huge amount, they’ll say no’. But I took Anurag’s name, and asked for the amount he’d suggested, and to my surprise, they agreed. That’s when I realised that I can accept money for commercial films.”
Manu Rishi said that for the entirety of his career, he’d been accepting whatever was offered to him. In the case of Excel Entertainment’s Inside Edge, he said that the offer itself was handsome, and the increment for subsequent seasons was bigger than what had been promised. “Keep your heart open, anybody can walk into your life,” he said.
In addition to acting in films such as Tanu Weds Manu Returns, Aankhon Dekhi, and Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, Manu Rishi is also known for writing the dialogues for Oye Lucky Lucky Oye. Anurag and Anil Kapoor went on to star opposite each other in Vikramaditya Motwane’s AK vs AK.
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