Ali Abbas Zafar: Salman Khan cribbed a lot to wear a langot

Salman Khan’s upcoming film ‘Sultan‘ has many firsts from the star. For the first time he is going to feature in a sports drama wherein he has donned the hat of a wrestler in the film. Further, for the first time Salman has gone all out and took off his pants to get into the skin of his character of a Pahalwan, by just posing in a langot. Well, Salman is known to take his shirt off in every picture, but ‘Sultan’ would have him going all bare except a langot to cover his essentials. We can imagine how difficult it would have been for the director Ali Abbas Zafar to convince the Dabangg Khan to go all out for his character.

In fact, the director himself claimed that this langot story of Salman has become a driving force of all his interviews. That’s how popular and excited people are to watch Salman Khan in langot. So during one promotional interaction, Ali was asked how did he convince Salman to wear a langot, he gave a long description of his crusade. He said that a lot of conviction went behind convincing Salman to wear a langot.  He said, “A lot of conviction went behind getting him ready to wear a langot. When I wrote the script and narrated to him, he reacted to everything positively apart from one thing and that was this. He said ‘Ye Pehalwan kya langot mein ladega?’ and I was like, yes! He is actually a very shy person. Though he removes off his shirt every time but, it takes a lot for him to be convinced to take that shirt off. He is the bible of body building in our country and when we have that pressure everyone will judge you on how you looking. But his role on paper demanded a certain character and what he would do on-screen. I convinced him over a period of time to wear that langot. The only costume that he paid attention to in this film is that langot. He used to measure that langot inch by inch and was unnerved before that langot scene. Very diplomatically, I asked his wrestling guru Jagdish Kaliraman to convince him to wear that.”

Further, he narrated an incident wherein he had a tough time convincing Salman. While shooting for Salman’s introductory fight for the film, Bhaijaan refused to wear the langot at the last minute as the director got real crowd to cheer for him. Ali narrated that, “When he walked onto the sets, he thought that some 50 60 people would be there in the crowd and then the crowd gets enhanced in the post production with the help of VFX, but as a director I always wanted to shoot his opening fight with the real crowd. This is the maximum number of crowd YRF has ever used. There were around 6000 people. So when his car passed by, he called me in this vanity van and he asked me what is this? I thought there would be 50 60 people, here there are 6000 people amongst which there are 2000 females. I will not wear a langot. Like a child I had sit with him again and make him understand that it would look good on screen. They will cheer for ‘Sultan’.”

Jokingly, Ali then said that, “He (Salman Khan) cribbed again for half an hour but then walked out in a bathing robe, almost looking like he was in an Osho Ashram and walked straight towards the ground. While walking he whispered in my ears that he if anyone from the crowd shouted Salman Khan then he would go back in the robe and leave. Fortunately, when he made it to the ground and removed his robe then everyone was quiet.”

Okay, now that’s a lot of conviction gone behind convincing Salman to wear a langot, but we would say that the effort was worth it. We just loved Salman wrestling in a mud pit wearing just a langot.

Also Read: Salman Khan wanted his Rio Olympics controversy to last long, but why?

Nikita Thakkar

A strongly opinionated, free-spirited, budding Bollywood journalist, she likes to write anything in her own quirky style. When not running around to get assigned tasks completed, you will find her either painting, indulging in photography or dreaming in the la la land.