White-hot controversy-john/bips

There's rampant racism on the sets of Goal, but Vivek Agnihotri tries to keep his actors from getting into wars of words

After Shilpa Shetty's much-talked about racism issue, it is Vivek Agnihotri's unit's turn to face the same. The unit has been shooting for Goal in London for the past couple of months.

Director Vivek Agnihotri says, "Racism has definitely been a major issue right through the filming of Goal, but I've already had this experience while filming Chocolate here. I had warned my entire unit about issues that we will face throughout the making of the film. It is very easy to answer back and give them a taste of their own medicine, but at the end of the day, that is not what we are made of. In any case, I will give it back to them through my film which has ample opportunities to deal with this."

When asked what kind of remarks they were victims of, Agnihotri says, "John, Bipasha, Arshad and many others used to shoot for long football sequences and that was very ugly. These goras used to pass many remarks about our skin colour, the fact that we are Indians and the superiority complex they had. There have been times when I have heard racist comments such as 'Bloody Indian' and 'Go back to your country'. However, I have always managed to keep my unit calm enough to never react. I have always told them to concentrate on their work rather than get in to an ugly war of words."