Jaya Bachchan Once Saved Amitabh Bachchan’s Career

Salim Khan recalls the day Jaya Bachchan helped preserve Amitabh Bachchan’s career during a talk with Arbaaz Khan.

Salim Khan, a renowned and seasoned screenwriter, claimed that Amitabh Bachchan’s acting career was completely transformed by Zanjeer. Did you know that he had actually asked Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar about playing the starring roles rather than him? Nevertheless, Dev Anand passed on the project since the lead had no songs in it, and Dilip turned it down because he felt he wouldn’t have enough room to display his talent.

Yet when Zanjeer was paired with Amitabh Bachchan, it rose to cult status in Bollywood. Salim, the film’s scriptwriter, provides commentary and details about what truly transpired in the sections that follow.

Salim Khan discussed how the script came to be in Amitabh Bachchan’s hands with his son Arbaaz during their interview on their chat programme, The Invincibles Series with Bollywood Bubble. Because the dialogue was already written in the script, he claimed that it was a matter of fate. We were planning on having Dharmendra perform it, but he decided against it, which always makes me a little sad. For his own reasons, Dev rejected it. When I later asked Dilip Kumar which movie he regretted not filming, he responded that it was Zanjeer.

Salim Khan said even though Amitabh Bachchan was a new actor, he believed in him. Salim Khan went on to explain how Amitabh Bachchan then considered permanently leaving Bollywood due to his back-to-back 11 flops. He also recommended Jaya Bachchan to play alongside Big B because he knew that other actresses would have turned him down. Salim described, in an oblique way, how Jaya Bachan saved Amitabh’s waning career:
Salim said – He was also new—he was a good actor, no doubt about that, with a good voice and personality. The rest of the films that failed, were because they were bad films, actors usually have to take the blame for that. Eleven films flopped. He had already decided to leave the industry and go. And also at the time, heroines did not want to take on less roles. Ultimately, I suggested to take Jaya Bachchan for the film, and she would do it for him. I told her the story, and she said ‘there’s nothing for me to do…’ I said there’s nothing much here, but this is for Amitabh Bachchan and this would be explosive for his career.”

The renowned screenwriting team of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar initially altered the scope of Bollywood films with Zanjeer. Nonetheless, the pair eventually broke up in the 1980s.