Blind Item(Rajeev Masand) – Pressure Tactics – 15th March

Rajeev Masand has published a blind item in Open The Magazine about an actress who buckled to the pressure tactics employed by a director.

Casting does go a long way in ensuring a film’s success. Casting is in fact the second most important thing, next only to the script. Sometimes the right cast can even turn around a shoddy script. It doesn’t help that when it comes to women oriented roles, there are only 2-3 heroines who can be counted on. So we can’t blame the director for pressurizing this newly married heroine(click here to read more). Say what you want, but one can’t deny her acting prowess. She is a scene stealer! She has been very lucky for her husband. Both his movies which released after they got married, have been huge successes. Ironically, she was considered to be unlucky for several of her exes.

Meanwhile we are wondering whether her marriage is open. We have written several blind items about her relationship being open before their marriage. But is their marriage open too? It may be if some blind items are to be believed!(click here to read more)

Blind Item

A prominent actress who has become particular about the projects she chooses here because it means dividing her time between two lives just wrapped work on a new film she was shooting in spurts and gaps over the last year or so. It’s inspired by an emotionally wrenching true story personal to the film’s director, and while the actress says she was instantly inclined to make the movie, it’s also true she’d been sitting on the script for months before finally picking it up to read.

Sources say the director sent the script soon after it was ready, but the actress was too busy. At that point the film still didn’t have a producer. While waiting to land her leading lady the director shopped the script around to producers and quickly found a partner in a leading outfit floated by a former studio boss. The pressure to cast the film was mounting, and repeated attempts to rush the actress to read the script had failed.

As it often happens in these scenarios, the director— with the producer now—was putting pressure on the actress’ team for a response. Her manager, who couldn’t understand what all the rush was about (she wouldn’t be the first actor to have taken months to get back about a script), decided to read the script herself before increasing the pressure on her client. Subsequently, things reportedly changed. Convinced it was a script the actress would be foolish to pass up, the manager reached out to her and told her she had to give it a chance. The actress said she would— soon. Then the manager uttered the final threat: She said the filmmakers had decided to go to another actress (her arch rival, as it turns out) if she didn’t reply immediately.

The actress pored over the script on her next flight and in 24 hours confirmed the film. She asked for the director to be flown to the US for a meeting and the project got a ‘go’ overnight. Since then she’s been a dream to work with, both the director and the producer insist.

But was the threat to go to the rival a cleverly planned stunt? We might never know.

Our Guess

Prominent Actress: Deepika Padukone
Movie: Chhappaak
Director: Meghna Gulzar
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala
Rival: Alia Bhatt