Govinda was one of the biggest stars in the 1990s, but as years went by, the actor lost his stardom with successive flops, and stories about his tardiness spread like wildfire. Many of his co-stars, and producers, have previously spoken about how Govinda would routinely show up late, and in a recent interview, actor Rajat Bedi recalled the time when the actor made Sanjay Dutt wait for almost nine hours on the set of Jodi No 1. Rajat said that Sanjay was so annoyed by the end of it that he made director David Dhawan change the scene that was supposed to be shot.
In a chat with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel, Rajat described Govinda as a “great human being” who had a “very big problem.” “He had taken on too much work. In Jodi No 1, David was supposed to start shooting at 7 am but Sanjay Dutt and I were there at 6 in the morning for some reason,” he recalled. Rajat said the crew had not even arrived by then but he and Sanjay hung out for a while there. Hours went by but there was no sign of Govinda.
“David and all of us were waiting for Govinda to come so we can start working. Then we got to know that Govinda is at home. So someone from the set was sent to his house and this person was sitting outside to get him to the set,” he recalled and added that after 8 hours, Sanjay was starting to lose his cool. “By the time it was 2 pm, Sanjay was freaking out,” he shared and mimicked Sanjay abusing Govinda.
Rajat shared that this is when they learnt that Govinda was not even at home, and was flying in from Hyderabad. “Nobody knew he was flying from Hyderabad and coming straight to the set at 3 pm. In those days, nobody would know where he was because at that time, he would do 4-5 shifts,” he recalled.
When Govinda came at 3 pm, he was ready to work and the assistant brought the scene to Sanjay. At this point, Sanjay realised that he had a lot of dialogues, as opposed to Govinda, so Sanjay instructed the assistant to flip the scene so he gets minimum lines. “Sanju started abusing the assistant and told him, you give these lines to Govinda, I will not do this. So the whole scene changed on the spot,” he shared.
But, after all of this, when Govinda started shooting the scene, he wrapped it all up in just 2 hours. “He is a performer,” Rajat concluded.
