Ranbir Kapoor says dad Rishi Kapoor was worried during cancer treatment: ‘I’ve label of a patient, will people give me work?’ 

Late actor Rishi Kapoor’s swan song Sharmaji Namkeen is set to release on Prime Video on March 31. The actor passed away halfway through the film and the makers then roped in Paresh Rawal to finish the film. Rishi’s son, actor Ranbir Kapoor, recently spoke about how the makers had initially thought about casting him in the film and using prosthetics.
Ranbir shared with Film Companion that the makers sent his photos to various special effects houses but the idea did not materialise. “That technology, first of all, is an extremely expensive technology,” he said. He added that the idea of a son completing his father’s work “maybe as a public sentiment, that could have worked” but the film needed an actor of Paresh Rawal’s calibre to complete the film.
“I would have just completed it and it would have been the sentiment of a son completing his father’s work but what Paresh ji brought in, I think we all got really lucky and very grateful that an actor of that calibre agreed to play one character,” he said.

Ranbir also spoke about the time when Rishi Kapoor was getting treated in New York for cancer and how he constantly worried about getting work once he returned. Ranbir recalled, “He said, ‘today I have a label of somebody who is suffering from cancer, will any producer or the corporate system that has entered the film industry, will they want to cast me? Will I get work?’”
Ranbir shared that Rishi did not care “if he was going to survive or not, what he was talking about was that will I get work as an actor?” The Sanju actor shared that his father was cancer-free months before his passing and it was the drive to return to a film set that helped him. “Just getting that hope from Ritesh (Sidhwani, the producer) really made him very excited and he wanted to get better and he wanted to come back and as soon as he got back, the only thing he wanted to do was eat a good Chinese meal, have four whiskeys, and get back to Sharmaji Namkeen, that was his purpose,” he said.
Sharmaji Namkeen also stars Juhi Chawla in a pivotal role.