Taha Shah Badussha asked for forgiveness from Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Taha Shah Badussha, who rose to fame after playing the tragic character Tajdar in ‘Heeramandi’, spoke about the intense audition process that he went through to bag the role. Taha was initially desperate to get any kind of part in the show and was then upgraded to the role of Tajdar’s best friend. But Bhansali saw something in his eyes and asked him to test for the role of Tajdar instead. Taha said in an interview that when he was told he wasn’t going to play the best friend character, he started pleading with Bhansali to reconsider, as he had no idea that the filmmaker had bigger things in mind.

Asked about his tumultuous audition process, Taha said in an interview with the ‘Urban Asian YouTube’ channel, “I actually signed on for a three-day role. And that, too, I was chasing the audition for 15 months. My friend and I literally begged and pleaded with the casting agent to consider us for any role, really.” Taha said that he had ‘nothing going’ for himself, so he decided to do the small part with the hope that he would make an impression on Bhansali and get called for a future project.

But fate had something different in store for him. Three weeks later, he was called to meet Bhansali, who observed that nobody knew him even though he’d been working for a decade. Bhansali said that he should play Tajdar’s friend Balraj instead. “Two weeks later, when I was on my way to sign the contract, I got a call saying, ‘We’re really sorry, but sir has decided to go another way with you and you might not be getting this role’.” Taha was gutted. Upon reaching Bhansali’s office, he didn’t wait for the filmmaker to speak and started pleading with him to reconsider. “I basically just held his hand and started pleading with him and saying, ‘Sir, please don’t take me out of this role. It means the world to me. It’s the biggest opportunity of my life. If I did something wrong, forgive me’.” Bhansali then told him to sit down and take a breath and try for the role of Tajdar instead.

Before he was finalised for the role of Tajdar, Taha waited weeks for any sort of good news. He started calling up the casting director Shruti Mahajan, who began to get ‘annoyed’ by his incessant requests for information. She told him that she couldn’t give him any updates until Bhansali told her what he wanted to do.