20 Years of Bluffmaster EXCLUSIVE: Rohan Sippy BREAKS silence on Preity Zinta references: “I hope she saw it as a cool compliment”; spills how Nana Patekar’s part became meme-immortal: “Was nervous to pitch Nana…so I took Ramesh Sippy with me”

Bluffmaster (2005), the cool con-comedy, completed 20 years on December 16. It had an interesting star cast, comprising Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Riteish Deshmukh, Boman Irani and Nana Patekar. The latter was quite loved and this was the first time he was seen in such a comic role. After all, this film was released in the pre-Welcome (2007) era and hence, viewers saw him in such an avatar for the first time. The scene where Nana Patekar’s character Chandru is shown worshipping himself has achieved cult status in the world of memes! In an exclusive interview with Bollywood Hungama, Rohan Sippy talked about casting Nana.

 

20 Years of Bluffmaster EXCLUSIVE: Rohan Sippy BREAKS silence on Preity Zinta references: “I hope she saw it as a cool compliment”; spills how Nana Patekar’s part became meme-immortal: “Was nervous to pitch Nana…so I took Ramesh Sippy with me”

 

Rohan Sippy began by saying, “We were luckily associated with Nana as we were working on another film, Taxi No 9211 (2006). We started casting for Bluffmaster in the first week of May and on June 16, 2005, we started shooting. This is because Abhishek suddenly had dates as Karan Johar delayed the production of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006). Thankfully, Priyanka and Riteish were available. The big question was who would play Chandru? It was written in a fun way. Writer Shridhar Raghavan suggested Nana’s name. At that point, he had not done any role of this sort.”

 

Nevertheless, Rohan approached the veteran actor. He then said, “Nana asked us to come and narrate. That morning, Shridhar had an emergency and he couldn’t make it. I was a bit apprehensive of meeting him and informing him about a part which was not the lead and in a very different space (laughs). Luckily, I spoke to my father (Ramesh Sippy) and he came along with me for the narration. That made a world of difference.”

 

Rohan continued, “Luckily, Nana had a good sense of the film and me and he agreed to do it. Before we began shooting, we spent a lot of time with him. I spent more days jamming with him than shooting with him! The end result is what you see in the film. We got crazier with his part and threw in one-liners. He has a gorgeous woman on his lap whom he calls laptop; we added stuff like that!”

 

 

The Preity Zinta reference

 

Bluffmaster interestingly references Preity Zinta twice. In the first half, Rtieish Deshmukh says Preity Zinta looks like a rasgulla and mistakenly calls her Bengali. In the climax, Nana Patekar utters, ‘Yahan se Preity Zinta ho ja’!

 

When asked if the actress ever shared her reaction to these mentions in the film, Rohan Sippy laughed and replied, “I should ask her. But I am sure she probably took it in stride. One of the lovely things that Shridhar and Rajat Arora did with that film was bringing in another pop way of writing about India. It’s sad that 20 years later, it’s not possible to do so due to legal reasons. Now you can’t add references or can’t even name the apps. Abhishek, in one dialogue in Bluffmaster, says, ‘Baaki sab ke liye Google hai’. I don’t think you can even say that now.”

 

Rohan Sippy added, “Also, before Bluffmaster, we didn’t have a lot of films referencing pop culture, like Jai-Veeru. Preity was also a part of it. It's lovely to be immortalized in the sense that she is the icon of beauty and cool! Hence, I hope she saw it as a cool compliment from Shridhar and Rajat.”

 

Also Read: 20 Years of Bluffmaster EXCLUSIVE: “We were stuck till 9 pm…” – Rohan Sippy reveals FASCINATING story behind Rajkumar Santoshi’s mention under ‘Special Thanks’ and his contribution to this Abhishek Bachchan-Boman Irani scene

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