Saif Ali Khan’s stylish turn in the 2008 thriller Race remains one of his most memorable performances, but directors Abbas-Mustan have now revealed that getting him on board wasn’t easy. In a recent interview with Lucky Bisht, the filmmaker duo opened up about the casting struggles they faced for the film and how Saif nearly backed out of the project.
Known for their complex, twist-heavy narratives, Abbas-Mustan said Race was initially rejected by five top Bollywood actors, all of whom complained that the story was too difficult to follow. “One of them said it felt like getting hit in the head with a hammer,” they recalled. “They didn’t want to do a film they couldn’t understand.”
When they were advised to approach Saif Ali Khan, the directors found him equally unsure. At the time, Saif was trying to break away from his image as a romantic hero and was open to experimentation. “He read the script four to five times and still couldn’t make complete sense of it,” they said. But he told us that he’d do the film if we gave him a great songs. Despite committing to the film, Saif later attempted to leave the project without informing them, the duo revealed.
However, he eventually stayed on, and Race went on to become a box-office success and a genre-defining film for Bollywood thrillers.The directors also shared that Amitabh Bachchan once praised Race after watching it on a flight, saying he was “stunned” for three hours and couldn’t predict the story at all.