Meet actress, who refused to work with Sushant Singh Rajput, called him 'TV actor', later she was cast opposite him in...

Sushant Singh Rajput, who died by suicide at the age of just 34 years in 2020, made his memorable Bollywood debut in Abhishek Kapoor's sports drama Kai Po Che, which also starred Rajkummar Rao and Amit Sadh in the leading roles. Though it is said that Sushant lost out on a few movie roles due to nepotism, many people don't know the fact that the late actor himself left his second film and ditched the makers for a Yash Raj production. Sushant was set to play the male lead in Hasee Toh Phasee, but the film's actress Parineeti Chopra called him "a TV actor" and refused to share screen space with him. When she told about him to Aditya Chopra, the producer made Rajput quit the 2014 film and sign a 3-film deal with Yash Raj Films.

Anurag Kashyap, who was one of the producers on Hasee Toh Phasee, revealed how Sushant betrayed them in an interview with the journalist Faye D’Souza in 2020. The Gangs of Wasseypur director said, "He was supposed to do the film (Hasee Toh Phasee) and we had to find an actress and we reached out to Parineeti Chopra. She said ‘I don’t want to work with a television actor’. So we explained to her that who Sushant Singh is, he is doing Kai Po Che, he is doing PK and by the time Hasee Toh Phasee comes out, he will not just be a television actor. And she was doing a film called Shuddh Desi Romance and she must have gone and spoken to YRF, they called him and said ‘Why don’t you come and do Shuddh Desi Romance and not do that film?’ And he disappeared on us."

Evetually, Sidharth Malhotra replaced Sushant Singh Rajput in Hasee Toh Phasee. Both the films - Shuddh Desi Romance and Hasee Toh Phasee - went on to become commercial successes. Sushant's second film with YRF was Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! in 2015, that earned a lot of critical acclaim but flopped at the box office. His third film with the production house, titled Paani, was shelved due to the creative differences between its director Shekhar Kapur and Aditya Chopra.

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