Madhavan rejected Vijay’s 3 Idiots remake: ‘Shankar called it a quickie, rang alarm bells’ | Bollywood News

Before R Madhavan played the role inspired Ajit Doval in the Dhurandhar franchise, one of his most popular and most loved roles was from the film 3 Idiots. In Rajkumar Hirani’s film, led Aamir Khan, Madhavan played Farhan, the guy who leaves engineering just before he graduates to pursue his dream of becoming a wildlife photographer. The role got him massive fame but despite all the love, Madhavan chose not to play the same role in the Tamil adaptation of the film, Nanban, directed Shankar.In an earlier chat with Chetan Bhagat on his YouTube channel, Madhavan explained his decision and implied that he made a bunch of excuses because he did not trust the filmmaking process for the Tamil version. Chetan was the writer of the source material, Five Point Someone, which inspired these films. When asked why he chose to reject Nanban, Madhavan shared a “big formula” from his life that has often helped him – “look beyond the obvious.”
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“If you look at the tick boxes for doing 3 Idiots in Tamil, it was obvious that the film would be a hit,” he said and recalled that Vijay, who is now the Chief Miner of Tamil Nadu, was going to play the lead role in the film.
He said that while he was doing 3 Idiots, he understood and created something but if he were to do it again, he would be “reproducing” the same thing, which, he felt, wouldn’t have the same effect. “You have an out-of-body experience every time you are acting. So if I had gone there and sh*t all over the scene, which, there is a possibility, because you have a complacency. You know, ‘I have already done it. I am not competing with anyone’. That complacency has resulted in me doing s**t stuff. So whatever good name I have earned for myself as Farhan in 3 Idiots, that will get erased and this will be remembered,” he said.
‘I didn’t want to do it’
Madhavan, however, added that even though Shankar is a “great director”, there was something that the director said that set “alarm bells” in his head. He explained that he had multiple reasons to say no, and explained that he had to convey it in the right manner.
A sequel to 3 Idiots is in the making.
“You project your intent but you say the right words. The intent was, ‘I don’t want to do it’. But you go with, ‘I am really stuck with dates, or I am too old’,” he said and added that the time Shankar would have finished filming, Madhavan himself would have been closer to 50, which was a concern for him, considering the character’s age.Story continues below this ad
“I said that I am too old because when I did 3 Idiots, I was already 40, and Shankar takes a long time to finish his film. So I thought that for me, to run and be a youngster is not gonna be a possibility, and eventually you need someone who is 35 to do the film and not someone closer to 50, that was one issue,” he said.
‘Shankar said I want to do a quickie’
Madhavan then explained another issue he had with taking up the film, and that was the kind of dedication that Shankar displayed when he spoke to Madhavan. “As an actor, I am very astute in terms of choosing… Deciphering the words that people use when they communicate with me. So Shankar said, ‘I have been doing these elaborate projects and I want to do a quickie. I want to do 3 Idiots and I want to move on’. That rang alarm bells in my head, like, ‘You can’t look at 3 Idiots as a quickie. That’s not what this film is about,” he said. Eventually, actor Srikanth did this role in the film.
Madhavan said that when he did the Hindi version, it was like a “religion” for him. “When I was doing 3 Idiots, playing Farhan was a religion for me,” he said and recalled the time when he said yes to the film. Admitting that he might sound “pompous” when he said so, Madhavan said that when he heard the script from Rajkumar Hirani, he was instantly taken the character of Farhan.
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“I said, ‘Anyone can be the hero of the film but there is one guy who will become immortal, and that is Farhan,” he recalled and shared the reason for the same. “One is the conversation he has with his father, it is a universal conversation that every Chinese, German, Japanese, will have with their parent, which could include who they want to get married to, or the profession they want to chase or the decisions they want to make. It was beautifully written and it was beautifully set up. I knew I was going to get immortal,” he said.
‘Going through a flop is sheer agony’
In the same chat, Madhavan also spoke about the feeling of insecurity that an actor faces almost every day, despite their last film being a hit or a flop. Talking about facing a flop, Madhavan said that he spends an entire day in “sheer agony”. “It’s gut-wrenching, like a child has died; it’s that bad. For me, I get into that foetal position and I just want to sit there,” he said.
Madhavan said that it is more hurtful when someone has invested their heart and soul into a film, as opposed to just doing a film for money. “If you have done it for the sake of money, I am not emotionally attached to it. You say, ‘I already knew that, I got the money’. But something you have invested your gut and soul and heart… Basically what you have done is you have presented your naked self or maybe your children in front of an audience and now they either wanna throw stones or give them bouquets. In both cases, I have realised that that feeling I have allowed myself to have for one day,” he said and added, that the next day, he feels “as insecure as I have ever been in my life.”
When asked about why he would feel insecure, Madhavan said, “What to do next? How do you surpass what you have done in 3 Idiots?”Story continues below this ad
Madhavan is still basking in the glory of Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar franchise, which made Rs 3100 crore at the global box office. The film starred Ranveer Singh in the lead role, alongside Rakesh Bedi, Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt, among others.
About 3 Idiots
A sequel of 3 Idiots is now in the making with director Rajkumar Hirani. The sequel will revisit the three primary characters going through a mid-life crisis.