Nushrratt Bharuccha shares why she wasn’t cast in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’

Nushrratt Bharuccha could’ve made her film debut with Danny Boyle’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ in 2008. She auditioned for the female lead of Latika, a slum girl eventually played by Freida Pinto. However, the actress didn’t bag the part because she was told by the makers that she was ‘too pretty’ to play a slum girl.

“That’s so interesting. Look at the world we’re in. Just look at this field of films,” said Nushrratt.

She added, “When I was told this on the phone, I wasn’t understanding what it meant. But I said, ‘Okay’ because they’re people working at a different level and their thoughts are very different. There must be something there. They must have thought of something. No problem, sure. But yeah, it was a little difficult to hear what kind of a reason that is.”

In an interview with a popular entertainment news portal, Nushrratt confessed that she understood the reasoning of the makers behind not casting her in that part once she watched the film. “There was no way I’d have been able to play that. You can’t find it logical that the two little girls shown in the film would grow up to become me,” she said.

‘Slumdog Millionaire’, a British film set in India, was adapted from Vikas Swarup’s novel ‘Q & A’. It revolved around a boy named Jamal (Dev Patel) explaining to the police how he managed to answer the coveted Rs 1 crore question in the Indian quiz show, ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’. Besides Dev Patel and Freida Pinto, the film also stars Anil Kapoor as the quiz show host and Irrfan Khan as a police officer.

Meanwhile, Nushrratt made her breakthrough with Dibakar Banerjee’s 2010 anthology ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha’. She followed it up with sleeper hits in Luv Ranjan’s 2011 romantic comedy ‘Pyaar Ka Punchnama’ and Luv’s 2018 buddy comedy ‘Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety’. She also starred in Raaj Shaandilyaa’s 2019 blockbuster comedy ‘Dream Girl’.

Her most recent film was Vishal Furia’s horror flick ‘Chhorii 2’, a sequel to her 2021 film ‘Chhorii’, which was released on ‘Prime Video India’.