In a new interview, film director Guddu Dhanoa, cousin of Bollywood veteran Dharmendra, who worked with Priyanka Chopra in ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Kismat’, revealed that the Sunny Deol-starrer was supposed to be her first film and was titled ‘Gandhi’ earlier. “This was back in 2002-2003. I did not know that she was doing other films as well,” he shared. “Back then this film was being made by the name of Gandhi, and Vijeta Films [the Deol banner] was producing the film. Sunny was producing and starring in that film, I was directing it. The title was later changed to Big Brother.”
The director disclosed that those were her initial days in acting after she won Miss World in 2000, and Chopra had this eagerness to learn. “We were shooting in Hyderabad and a scene was narrated to her. Back then she did not know much about acting. She would say, ‘Please explain to me, how do I do it’. It means she has a hunger to learn, she had it at that time, she wanted to do it, wanted to do it very well, and her looks were also good,” Dhanoa remembered.
He continued to recall, “We started shooting and we had a very long schedule. After we shot for 15-20 days, we started getting reports from Mumbai that ‘She looks very bad, she is a very bad actor, please watch the rushes’. So, I said, ‘Okay, we will watch the rushes.’ We saw the rushes, whatever we had shot there, however much we had shot, and after watching the rushes, Sunny Deol and I decided that we would work with this girl and complete the film with this girl only. And I think we liked her.”
“I mean we liked her screen presence, and we liked her as an actor too. We thought she would grow, and we were right. Later she grew a lot as a person and actor. I later did another hit film Kismat with her Bobby Deol in the lead,” he added.
“Today she improved as an actor and improved a lot. Today, everyone knows the rest of the history,” concluded the filmmaker.
Priyanka Chopra speaks up on her dark period in Hollywood
Notably, Chopra started her career participating in a local beauty pageant before she was crowned Miss World, at the age of 18. She later entered the film industry making her debut in Tamil title ‘Thamizhan’, opposite Thalapathy Vijay.
Her first Bollywood film was Anil Sharma’s spy thriller ‘The Hero Love Story of a Spy’, with Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta.
Meanwhile, ‘Big Brother’ was released much later in 2007.
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