Paresh Rawal on Nana Patekar: No Artifice, No Half Measures

Some screen partnerships are built on chemistry. Paresh Rawal and Nana Patekar’s was built on something rarer: years of watching each other from the wings of Mumbai’s Marathi theatre before they ever shared a frame.

In a new conversation with Filmfare, Rawal looks back at the Nana most audiences never see — a stage veteran who could be intimidating on set, generous away from it, and incapable of doing anything by halves.

A friendship that began on stage

Rawal first saw Patekar at Chhabildas in a Marathi play, Aala Adanayacha Gaada, directed by Arvind Deshpande. “I watched him with a mixture of awe and envy,” he recalls. By the time Patekar was performing in Hamidabaichi Kothi for Vijayabai, Rawal says, he was already a veteran.

Their first proper meeting came at Anil Ganguly’s office. Rawal had just been appreciated for Rahul Rawail’s Arjun (1985), and Patekar walked up with a direct compliment: “Tera kaam achha hai Arjun mein.” The reason for the visit was just as direct — he had come to say no to a film. One of the first films they signed together was Aanch, directed by Rajesh Singh, which released much later in 2003 and marked Vyjayanthimala’s son Suchindra Bali’s Hindi debut.

The temper, the tea and the mutton

Rawal is candid about Patekar’s famous temper. On the sets of Ghulam-E-Mustafa (1997) and Welcome (2007), he says, Patekar had little patience for inefficiency or lack of clarity. “There were no half measures for Nana.” But the unpredictability had a comic side too: after cooking an excellent mutton dish for a producer, Rawal remembers, Patekar made the man clean the vessels.

A favourite story involves Ram Gopal Varma, who wanted Patekar for Shiva (1989), a role later played by Raghuvaran. Patekar invited RGV over, offered tea, and when RGV admitted he didn’t know how to make it, Patekar reportedly called RGV’s mother to complain. Rawal still calls Patekar’s long climax scene in RGV’s The Attacks of 26/11 (2013) “unbelievable.”

The softer side

Behind the temper, Rawal describes a man who would call to ask after his wife and children, softened in later years, and did social work without any hype. “He had no malice, no agendas. I never saw any vindictiveness in him.”

That is why Rawal wanted to write a cool biker with dreadlocks for him in OMG 2. The character never took shape, and Rawal opted out when the script changed. It was later reworked into a godlike character played by Akshay Kumar.

Why this matters for fans

For Hindi film fans, Rawal’s memories are a reminder that the most watchable stars are rarely simple. It also explains why the pair’s scenes still hold up: both actors came from a no-shortcuts theatre culture.

• They made Krantiveer (1994), Aanch (2003) and Welcome (2007) feel lived-in because the trust predated the camera.
• Patekar’s no-half-measures approach explains both his intensity and his reputation for being difficult.
• The unpublicised social service is a quieter side fans rarely see on a poster.

The takeaway is less about gossip than about craft: Patekar’s gravitas came from the same unsentimental honesty that could make him hard to work with. Rawal’s summary is affectionate: “He was a yaaron ka yaar.”

Source: Filmfare