Akshay Kumar BROKE His 8-Hour Shoot Policy for Sarfira, Director Says ‘He Acted Stern But…’ | Exclusive

Sarfira director Sudha Kongara Prasad shared an interesting anecdote about working with Akshay Kumar in an exclusive chat with News18. The filmmaker, who is remaking her Tamil film Soorarai Pottru in Hindi, said she loved working with Akshay. She praised the actor for his schedule but added that there came a day when she had to meddle with it and was scared to ask him to make changes to it.

Speaking with us, Sudha revealed that Akshay had a strict 8-hour policy which he had informed her at the beginning of the shot. While most of the film was completed in his schedule, a crucial climax scene lasted longer than his schedule and the team wondered how they would convince Akshay to extend his time on the sets.

“Akshay sir has this policy, he’s told me from Day Zero that he will work 8 hours and in those 8 hours, he says, he is like an assistant director. He doesn’t move out of the sets. But after 8 hours, you just look around and he might not be there. This is what I was told and warned. However, this didn’t happen with us. We always worked with the said condition in front of us. But that particular day, it was going beyond 8 hours and we had the finish the scene because we were finishing the film,” she recalled.

“My first AD went and requested him. He told Akshay, ‘Sir, another 10 minutes sir, another half hour sir, we know it is beyond 8 hours. (He was bargaining) Sir, so many days I have let you go in 5 hours and 6 hours.’ Akshay sir replied, ‘Yeah, that’s because I finished my work early, because I was fast.’ The AD continued to plead him, ‘Please give us half hour.’ Very sweetly, Akshay gave us the half hour,” the filmmaker said.

The scene was shot near the Wathar Railway Station, on the outskirts of Bhor, Maharashtra. Sudha revealed that Akshay was staying in Panchgani and would travel to and fro from his location during the shoot. He had asked the team to give him a turnaround of 12 hours while they were shooting. However, due to the delayed shoot at the Wathar Station and an early shoot schedule on the following day, Sudha knew she wouldn’t be able to give Akshay his requested turnaround time and wondered if he would make an exemption.

“He generally asks for 12 hour turn around but the thing was, the next day, we had a lot of work and we wanted him to finish one particular scene. Since he was living in Panchgani, he had to come down to the plains and shoot. So we are talking about the travel time and prep time. I wanted to shoot the scene on the following day at 6:30-7 am. That meant he had to start from Panchgani at 3-3:30 am, without the 12-hour turnaround. There were hardly 6 hours between the two shifts. My AD and I thought he was going to kill us and we wondered how do we ask him. We eventually went and requested him,” Sudha recalled.

At first, Akshay pretended to be stern but he eventually not only arrived at the sets at the said time but also shot the toughest scene of the film on the day. “He was acting stern but knowing his sense of humour, (I knew he was joking). He said, ‘Okay, I will think about it, I’ll see. You are violating my rules.’ But the next day, we all turned up on sets and all we wanted to know was has Akshay sir left Panchgani. He left on the dot, he arrived on sets on the dot and he made this exception without a fuss. He shot the toughest scene of the film on that day and it was beautiful. That’s my fondest memory of him,” Sudha said.

Speaking about his qualities, Sudha said she and Akshay have several things in common, which worked in her favour. “From the time I signed the project — first we screened the film for him, he hadn’t seen it before he agreed to do it — to the time I went to him with the first draft of the Hindi version, he (has been) just terrific as far as I am concerned.

“I wake up at 4 am and he does the same, so our readings were 4 in the morning. Full of energy, full of life, we were jumping off the walls so we were absolutely delighted to work with him because I hate shooting into the nights, he hates shooting into the nights too. He is a mirror image and that is good. And his discipline. I just love the way that you don’t have to look at your watch, you just know that he is on the dot. So if you give him a call time of 7 am, he is there at 6:58 am with make up on and he doesn’t go back into his vanity until he finishes his shot. I love all of that about him,” Sudha said.

Sarfira marks Sudha and Akshay’s first collaboration. The film is slated to release on July 12.