Actor Bakhtiyaar Irani, in a recent interview, re3vealed that he was originally supposed to feature in Sara Ali Khan's historical biopic, Ae Watan Mere Watan, but was replaced at the last minute by a bigger name. While appearing in Inside The Mind With Rushabh, He revealed that he was asked to lose weight for the role as he was considered too bulky. “The director calls me, it's (a Karan Johar production). I didn't know, I thought I was meeting Kanan (Iyer) the director. I met him, he told me that I am very well built, but in the 1940s, people were puny. So I lost 8 kgs in one and a half months and went back to him. He said, ‘Very good, agle (next) week contract signing'. Everything was done. I told my wife and family and my close circle of friends about it, I told about 30 people as I was signing it the next day. I wondered what could go wrong, so I told them. But then it didn't happen. This is the character that Sara Ali Khan came to (for help),” he said.
On being asked about the reason for being replaced, he said, "“Bigger name, (not) a good actor… and I have gone through auditions, proper auditions. Kanan, the director, he loved me. Everything was proper. But I decided not to talk about it… But it was a very big jhatka (shock) for me because (it would have been a big opportunity) for me,” he added.
In Ae Watan Mere Watan, Sara plays Usha Mehta, a young woman who starts an underground radio station to spread messages during the Quit India movement.