Director Anees Bazmee REVEALS the reason why they hired a voice artist for Katrina Kaif in Welcome

Anees Bazmee revealed that while they initially contemplated creating a backstory to explain Welcome, they hired a voice artist for Katrina Kaif. Despite having a career in Bollywood that spans over 20 years, Katrina’s early journey was challenging. However, she gained prominence with successes like Namastey London and New York. This contradicted Katrina’s previous statements of never having to dub in films.

Anees Bazmee hired a voice artist for Katrina Kaif in Welcome

During an interview with The Lallantop, Anees Bazmee disclosed that due to unclear diction, they hired a voice artist for Katrina Kaif while shooting Welcome. This contradicts Katrina’s previous statements about not having her voice modified. “We had her voice dubbed in Welcome, but by the time Singh is Kinng, she was dubbing for herself. At that time, she was learning and putting in a lot of effort, and we wanted to support her. However, her diction wasn’t very clear, which made it sound a bit off. We even considered creating a backstory that she had lived abroad all her life, but it felt like manipulation, so we decided to go with dubbing instead,” he explained.

In a past interview, Katrina Kaif denied having her voice dubbed, emphasizing her success was a result of hard work. She recounted how Jackie Shroff had encouraged her to learn the Devnagri script, which proved essential early in her career. “It was just hard work. Jackie Shroff was the one who advised me to learn Devnagri, and that was crucial because, in my initial films, directors would often write the lines on set in Devnagri. I never wanted to be in a situation where I was lost, so I took it upon myself to learn how to read it, and that laid a strong foundation for me,” she said.

About Welcome

Anees Bazmee further reminisced that he had initially planned that Katrina’s character would be based out of a foreign land and had returned to India. However, it felt like a manipulation to him, the director added. Bazmee then decided to get her voice dubbed by some other artist.

For the unversed, Akshay Kumar played the lead role of Rajiv Saini in Welcome and Katrina Kaif played Sanjana Shetty. The 2007 comedy-drama featured actors like Nana Patekar, Anil Kapoor, and Paresh Rawal in key roles.

Nana Patekar played Uday Shetty, a don, and Anil Kapoor’s character was Sagar Pandey, aka Majnu Bhai. Katrina, as Sanjana, was their on-screen sister in the movie. Paresh Rawal essayed Dr Ghungroo in Anees Bazmee’s directorial. Late veteran actor Feroz Khan made his last on-screen appearance as Ranvir Dhanraj X, aka RDX, in the film.

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