Made changes in 'Sanju' script to create empathy for Dutt: Rajkumar Hirani

Filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani revealed he shot additional portions for "Sanju", his biographical drama on Sanjay Dutt, to create empathy for the actor after people "hated" him in test screenings.

Hirani said the initial edit featured the actor's story as it was and thus was not liked by people.

"During the shoot I felt 'What am I doing, I'm going wrong.' In fact, when the first edit was ready and we screened for people, they hated him. They said we don't like this man, we don't want to watch him," he said.

"Because I wanted to do a true story, I didn't create any empathy towards him. I said lets not create empathy and show (him) as he is. But later I understood that he is our hero, we need some empathy for him," the director added.

Hirani said he had to add a certain scene in the film to create empathy for its lead character, which was not there earlier.

"The scene where he tries to kill himself after the verdict is out; which he had mentioned to me but we didn't put in the film, I shot it later. It was not in the original script. I thought through this some empathy will come...

"The initial test reactions were like 'naah we don't like this guy...' Every film is a journey. Some things work and some don't. I still see flaws in the film but you try your best and hope your best is good enough."
"I was blown away by 'Black Friday'. If Anurag would have heard the story, he may have been attracted to the gun angle and would have made that story. He would have made a great film with that."
"We made a commentary about certain section of the media and the term 'whitewashed' came into play. Everywhere I go people say I have whitewashed him but I haven't. A journalist asked me, why did you whitewash Sanju and I asked what was Sanju's crime?