At the recently held Big Zee Entertainment Awards in which both Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt won awards for Udta Punjab, the former let out that he was the one who felt the Bhatt girl was ideal for the role! Not only that he even slyly passed on the script of the film to her. He revealed that it took one year to get a nod from Alia. At that time, the actress was shooting for her films back-to-back, but Shahid gave her as much time as she needed and persisted she came on board. Alia agreed saying, "It was one of the toughest roles of my career."
