Ranveer Singh was acting like he was on ‘200 Red Bulls’, Irrfan Khan was annoyed, Akshaye Khanna ‘clammed up’: Rajeev Masand recalls roundtable stories

Former film journalist Rajeev Masand recalled behind-the-scenes stories of his famous roundtable interviews, which he conducted with filmmakers and actors at the end of each calendar year. He said that the biggest hurdle in putting together such interviews was managing the egos of artists and finding a time that would suit each guest. In an appearance on the Varun Duggi podcast, Masand recalled specific instances involving the late Irrfan Khan and the famously reclusive Akshaye Khanna. He said, “The hardest part about those roundtables was just getting that table together, that date. I was in the artist management business before I was in the artist management business. Just coordinating that date was a monstrosity, and the egos…”

Recalling the first-ever actors roundtable that he put together, Masand, who now works in artist management at Karan Johar’s Dharma Cornerstone Agency, said, “I remember the first one we ever did. It was Aamir Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, there was Irrfan Khan and Nawaz. It was the year that Nawaz had Gangs of Wasseypur, Irrfan had Paan Singh Tomar, Aamir had Talaash and Ranbir had Barfi. I didn’t know if it would happen, because it had never been done, but they were very nice about it, and Nawaz was shooting in Wai, which was hours away.”

At the last minute, he recalled, Irrfan pulled out. And because his phone was switched off, there was no way that he could get in touch with him and plead with him to join them. He said, “Because Nawaz was shooting in Wai, the only way we could do it is if we shot at midnight. So Nawaz would finish at 8, drive four hours to Mumbai, and return to shoot the next morning. It all worked out, except one hour before the shoot, I got a call saying that Irrfan can’t come… They were like he’s shooting a YRF film and it’s gone on, I was like, you can’t be serious… Irrfan had put his phone off, so I couldn’t reach him. I had to make all these calls to directors and producers. Nikkhil Advani had just worked with him in D-Day, and Nikkhil made the call to him. Irrfan came, very, very p**ed off to be pulled out of set to do this interview.”

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But, Masand said, it really worked, and they shot till 3 in the morning. Sometimes, however, there was a sense of discomfort with these interviews because one actor just wasn’t the right fit. Recalling one such incident, Masand said that Akshaye Khanna simply refused to open up in a roundtable that also included Ranveer Singh, Shahid Kapoor, Ayushmann Khurrana and Vijay Varma. “Not that he was a ‘wrong guest’, but one of the last ones I shot was the one where we had Akshaye Khanna. He’s a really shy guy, what was I thinking? He just clammed up completely, and we had Ranveer Singh, who’s the other end of the spectrum. It was like one guy was on 200 Red Bulls, and one guy who just isn’t opening up… We were all trying to get Akshaye to open up, they jumped in, they took on my job and started asking questions, and it worked to some extent, but sometimes, it doesn’t happen,” he said.