I'm not playing Mujibur Rahman - Amitabh Bachchan

A report in a section of the press that Amitabh Bachchan would be playing the role of Bangladesh's founding-father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has the mega-star completely stumped, puzzled and amused. "I've no idea what all this is about. Lots of mediapersons have been calling since yesterday. I can't say where and how this report originated from. But it is not true," said the Big B from London on Saturday morning just before he boarded his flight back to Mumbai.

Not only does the PTI report (Amitabh Bachchan to play 'Bangabandhu' Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Fri, May 2 04:12 PM) state with absolute authority that the Big B plays Mujibur Rahman, it also quotes the film's producer as saying that the rest of the Bachchan clan, Abhishek and Aishwarya, will also feature in this bio-pic.

Continues the Big B, "I've no clue about this. There's nothing to it. At least not as far as I'm concerned. I'm hearing all this talk about this film for the first time."

This isn't the first time that producers have made premature or unfounded announcements about the Big B's presence in a project. But it would have been interesting to watch him play a historical character. In all these years of superstardom the Big B has never played a biographic figure. The closest he came to it was in Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar where his role had shades of Bal Thackeray.

--By Subhash K Jha