Akshay Kumar has been going through a difficult patch in his career, but he has said on several occasions that he bounced back from a worse situation many years ago. When he was starting out, Akshay delivered a series of flops, which led the film industry to practically write him off. Some of the movies that he was working on were shelved because of his lack of bankability. It was at this time that he met with producer Suneel Darshan, who cast him in the film Jaanwar. The movie turned things around for Akshay, and there was no looking back. In an interview, Suneel said that their relationship didn’t end on a positive note, and implied that the actor was ‘corrupted’ by other forces as he gained prominence.
Chatting with Minutes of Masala, he recalled a promise that Akshay made to him after his career had gotten back on track. “I first offered Jaanwar to Sunny Deol, but he told me the script needs more work. I thought, ‘This man is lying’. Then, Ajay Devgn showed interest. But he was already a big star and very busy. The next day, Akshay called me and asked to meet. I invited him over, and it was the first time we’d formally met. He had a great reputation, and I remember thinking that he was very handsome. During that meeting, I decided to go with him for Jaanwar.”
He continued, “The one downside was that he’d delivered a lot of flops. So, from both the audience and the industry’s perspective, he was a… In fact, several of his films had stalled midway. He was doing nothing, he was totally available. He was ready to give me 100% and I was going to extract 200% out of him.” As actors become more popular and successful, he said, a ‘corruption’ begins to set in. They stop interacting directly, and communicate via their teams and managers.
He said, “In fact, Akshay made a promise to me. He held my hand and told me, ‘Please promise you’ll do 100 films with me’. I thought to myself, ‘This is how he must propose to women’. We worked together for seven years, and we did seven films together. I look back on that time with fondness, even though the end wasn’t very pleasant.”
In a past interview, Suneel Darshan had also implied that Akshay’s wife, Twinkle Khanna, wasn’t very pleased about him working with Priyanka Chopra. “She had issues with Priyanka, I was told… I feel the profession has its own hazards. Sometimes, the proximity, sometimes the individual’s own lifestyles, all these things come in the way and the media blows it out of proportion, without realising how much loss a filmmaker could suffer because of…” he told Bollywood Hungama.
