Abhishek Bachchan says Bob Biswas is better than Kahaani: ‘With all due respect…’

Actor Abhishek Bachchan will soon be seen as the middle class Bengali assassin in Bob Biswas. The film is a spin-off of 2012 movie Kahaani, directed by Sujoy Ghosh and starring Vidya Balan in the lead.

Bob Biswas is directed by Diya Annapurna Ghosh, Sujoy’s daughter. In a new interview, Abhishek said that he recently watched the hit original and found Bob Biswas to be the better film.

“I saw Kahaani last year during the lockdown for the first time. I finished almost 80 per cent of the shoot, then we had to break because of the lockdown and halfway through, one day I finally said that ‘okay, let me see this film,’” he told Indian Express in an interview. He added, “I think our film is better. With all due respect to Sujoy, his daughter (Diya) is better than him.”

Kahaani starred Vidya as Vidya Bagchi, a pregnant woman searching for her missing husband in Kolkata. Played by actor Saswata Chatterjee, Bob Biswas –an LIC agent who moonlighted as a cold-blooded contract killer– became the breakout character from the film.

In an interview with PTI, Sujoy said that Abhishek was considered for the original as well. The first draft of the film focused on the characters of Vidya Bagchi and Bob Biswas but later underwent a change as Abhishek couldn’t do the film.

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When Sujoy started working on the spin-off “Bob Biswas”, he went back to Bachchan to play the titular part.

“When I started creating the new Bob, I went back to that same person and asked him if he would do it now, if he has the dates. He immediately said yes. That was Abhishek. “When I was thinking of the new one, he just happened. He was always the first Bob when we wrote the first draft, which never happened.”

Bob Biswas is set to premiere on streaming service ZEE5 on December 3.