Ali Fazal’s 3 Idiots casting story: ‘I had fights over them making holes in my shirt’

Ali Fazal

Actor Ali Fazal's first brush with mainstream cinema was with Rajkumar Hirani's blockbuster film 3 Idiots. The 2009 film, starring Aamir Khan, Sharman Joshi, and R. Madhavan in the lead, is one of Bollywood's biggest hits and has a massive fan base. In the film, Ali had a small yet impactful role - he played an engineering student who takes his own life after the dean fails him for delaying his project submission. So, how did he bag such a pivotal role in 3 Idiots?

Ali Fazal's 3 Idiots casting story

Speaking on mid-day's The Bombay Film Story, Ali Fazal said that Rajkumar Hirani had seen him in a play and called him to Vidhu Vinod Chopra's office for an audition.

"They played the song for me. I recorded it on my phone. Before that, without thinking, I said I knew how to play the guitar when they asked. I said yes to everything but I didn't actually know anything. Then they asked me to prepare the scene," he recalls.

Ali's character performs the song Give Me Some Sunshine, which became a college anthem back then, with students deeply resonating with the lyrics.

Recalling the audition, Ali said, "I was wearing the same shirt in the scene that I wore on the day of the audition. It had a specific kind of checks, and they asked me to bring it. Later, I had a lot of fights because they made holes in the shirt to fix a harness for the hanging scene. I didn't have too many clothes back then."

At the time of the audition, Ali didn't know that Aamir Khan was part of the film. The only thing he knew was that the film was being made by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. "I only knew it was by the man who made Parinda. The rest of the details followed. I recorded the song on my phone and used to listen to it on the train."

About 3 Idiots

It is a coming-of-age satirical comedy-drama film written, edited and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, co-written by Abhijat Joshi and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The film stars Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan and Sharman Joshi in the title roles, while Kareena Kapoor, Boman Irani, Mona Singh and Omi Vaidya play supporting roles. Narrated through two parallel timelines, one in the present and the other set ten years earlier, the story follows the friendship of three students at an Indian engineering college and is a satire about the intrinsic paternalism under the Indian education system.