Bollywood actor Bobby Deol in a recent interview called the film industry "ruthless" and said that the projects he was to work on were taken away from him in the past.
In his interview, the actor admitted that he was supposed to star in Ajnabee. The film eventually went on to star Akshay Kumar in the role originally intended for Bobby, who ended up playing a different character.
In an interview, Bobby said, "The people I offered the project to, they eventually took the project from me and made it with themselves. That’s how it is, this industry is ruthless."
Earlier, in a different interview with HuffPost India, Bobby had said that he was supposed to star in Jab We Met directed by Imtiaz Ali, but was replaced by Shahid Kapoor at the insistence of Kareena Kapoor, who was dating Shahid at the time.
"There was a studio called Shri Ashtavinayak who wanted to sign me. I told them that let’s sign Imtiaz. He has a script ready. And let’s talk to Kareena Kapoor. The producers were like, oh no, that guy will make an expensive film. Kareena, on the other hand, didn’t even want to meet Imtiaz. I took them to Preity Zinta. She agreed but said she can do it only after 6 months. So we were stuck."
Bobby said that he found out later that Kareena had signed the film, and had got Imtiaz to hire Shahid to play the main role. "I was like, wow. Quite an industry. But I have no hard feelings against him. He is a great director and doing so well. We're still friends. But I always tell him, 'Imtiaz, I won’t watch any of your films until you make one with me. That’ll be your best film.'"
On the work front, after four years Bobby had made a comeback of sorts with Shreyas Talpade’s Poster Boys and Race 3 and Housefull 4 (also starring Akshay Kumar). This year, Bobby appeared in Netflix’s Class of 83, produced by Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment, and then in the Prakash Jha-directed series Aashram.
