With the epic television series Mahabharat returning for a rerun on Doordarshan, a recent interview with Nitish Bharadwaj has him reveal that he had turned down the offer by BR Chopra to play the role of Krishna.
Amid the lockdown, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry decided to bring back the epic television series Mahabharat after three decades. With that, Nitish Bharadwaj, the actor who played Krishna, has also returned to the television screens. However, he has revealed that he had initially refused to be a part of the series.
Before he was cast as Krishna in Mahabharat, he was offered to play the role of Vidur and was soon dropped. The news of him being dropped came from an unexpected source. Apparently, when Nitish reached the sets and was getting ready, he met Virendra Razdan who had replaced him as Vidur. Not able to believe the news, he reached out to BR Chopra, the director, who later consoled him saying since Vidur is going to age in the show quite early, a man as young as Nitish would not be appropriate to play the role. Post that, he was unemployed as far as the series was concerned.
Later, he was offered to play the tole of Nakul and Sahadev but he wanted to play Abhimanyu instead. Despite persuasion by BR Chopra, he refused to play Nakul and Sahadev. Days later, he was approached again for the lead role of Krishna. When he was offered the role, he was outdoors shooting a Marathi feature. He turned the role down as he thought he couldn’t do it.
Months later, when he was back in Bombay and was assisting Ravi Baswani, he bumped into BR Chopra. BR Chopra confronted him to give a screen test but Nitish refused it saying ‘how can an inexperienced person play such a role.’ This time it was BR Chopra who was persuaded him. After repeated attempts at convincing him, Nitish Bharadwaj finally agreed to give a screen test and the rest remains history. The role earned him national fame as the show went onto become one of the successful series on Indian Television history.
