Arshad Warsi 'Pushed' Jolly LLB 2 Makers To Cast Akshay Kumar: 'He Would Make Frames Look Good' | Exclusive

In a career spanning three decades, Arshad Warsi has proved his mettle with projects like the Munna Bhai series, Sehar, Ishqiya, Jolly LLB and The Ba***ds Of Bollywood. But these peak points didn’t necessarily translate to the kind of work that he would’ve liked. Arshad has attributed the lulls in his career to being pigeonholed as a comic actor and the industry often not taking risks.

He, however, doesn’t rue the lack of solo hero opportunities as that was never a priority for him. Speaking exclusively to News18, he says, “As far as not playing the lead is concerned, it never bothered me from day one of my career. I just like doing my job. I like good scripts. I like good roles. That’s all. If you see my entire graph, it has always been like this.”

In fact, Arshad recalls turning down films that would feature him as the protagonist. “I’ve said no to many films where I was supposed to play the solo lead. I said no to one such film recently as well. It’s not like I didn’t like the part,” he says. So, what was the reason then? “I’m very practical,” he states. Passing on the Jolly LLB reins to Akshay Kumar was his idea too.

“When they were making Jolly LLB 2 and Akshay wanted to play the part, I had told Subhash (Kapoor; director) that he should make the film with Akshay. If I would bring a crowd of 500 people, Akshay would get a crowd of 5000 people. His presence would make the frames look good. I was one of the guys who actually pushed Subhash to do the film with Akshay,” he remarks.

Early on in his career, Naseeruddin Shah’s words of praise had stayed back with him and he continued to live by it. “This is something that Naseer saab had told me. He had said that the reason why I could do Circuit the way I did it is because I didn’t have an ego with the hero (Sanjay Dutt). He stated that if I thought I was bigger than the hero, I couldn’t have done Circuit,” he tells us.

“So, I’m not the kind of a person who would want to do solo leads only,” Arshad adds. For the unversed, one of the many draughts he witnessed in his career was right after Munna Bhai MBBS had released, a film that achieved a cult status over the years and made him a household name. “After Munna Bhai, I suddenly didn’t get work for quite some time,” he says.

The Pritam And Pedro actor continues, “I even asked Raju (Rajkumar Hirani; director), ‘What is it? Did I do a good job or no?’ He then told me the problem is, nobody knows where to fit me and that once they figure that out, I would start getting work. It became a very weird thing. Where do you put me? You can’t put me as a solo lead. You can’t put me down there. That became a little issue.”