AR Murugadoss ‘wanted’ Salman Khan for Ghajini; Pradeep Rawat says he convinced the filmmaker to choose ‘cool-tempered’ Aamir Khan instead of Salman.

Filmmaker AR Murugadoss was keen on casting actor Salman Khan in the 2008 Hindi remake of the his 2005 Tamil movie, Ghajini. In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, Pradeep Rawat, who played the villain in both the Tamil and Hindi films, revealed it was he who recommended Aamir Khan for the lead role instead of ‘short-tempered’ Salman.

Salman Khan was AR Murugadoss’ first choice for Ghajini, and not Aamir Khan, as per actor Pradeep Rawat.

‘Salman Khan cannot be handled’

Actor Pradeep Rawat opened about on why Salman was not fit for the role, saying, ‘AR Murugadoss used to keep saying ‘I want to make it (Ghajini) in Hindi, I want to make it in Hindi…’ I thought in my mind ‘Salman is short-tempered and Murugadoss doesn’t speak in English or Hindi. He didn’t even have a personality back then.’’

Pradeep, who worked with Aamir in movies such as Sarfarosh (1999), thought that because of his ‘cool’ demeanour, Aamir was better-suited for the film.

He said, “I thought Aamir would be the right choice for the role because he was cool-tempered and behaves respectfully with everyone. In the past 25 years, I have not seen Aamir shout or yell at anyone. He has never disrespected anyone or used abusive language. So I thought, nature-wise, Salman cannot be handled or there would be unnecessary complications.’

About Ghajini

The action thriller, directed and co-written by AR Murugadoss, marked his Hindi film debut. It featured Aamir Khan, Asin (in her Hindi film debut, reprising her role from original) and Jiah Khan (in her penultimate film role before her death in 2013), with Pradeep Rawat as the titular antagonist.

The film tells the story of Sanjay Singhania (Aamir Khan), a successful entrepreneur, who suffers from anterograde amnesia after an attack on him and his fiancee Kalpana (Asin).