Naseeruddin Shah was sceptical of Omkara, slammed industry for always stealing from Shakespeare: ‘We tried to pass it off as our own'

Indian Express

11-07-2025

Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara is often hailed as a turning point in mainstream Hindi cinema. A gritty adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello, the film brought the politics, language, and layered morality of heartland India into the spotlight like never before. Released in 2006, it wasn't just a bold creative leap, it was a foundational moment that paved the way for films like Gangs of Wasseypur a few years later. Raw, unfiltered, and unapologetically desi, Omkara showed that commercial films could also be rooted in strong literary tradition and regional authenticity.
As the second installment in Bhardwaj's Shakespearean trilogy, flanked by Maqbool (Macbeth) and Haider (Hamlet), Omkara became both a cinematic triumph and a literary homage. But few know that one of the most respected actors in the film, Naseeruddin Shah, was initially unsure about being part of the project. In an interview given to Wild Films India during the lead-up to the film's release, Naseer candidly admitted, 'I was sceptical. Until I read the script. Because it may seem as if we haven't made too many films on Shakespeare in India, but the truth is that almost every Hindi film borrows heavily from Shakespeare. All the clichés of Hindi cinema have been borrowed from Shakespeare, every single one. And the reason for that is that at the time when movies became talkies, we had a lot of very literate writers around. And today's writers merely ape the old tricks of the trade and imagine that these are original things, whereas in fact, you find the mistaken identities, the twin brothers, the poor boy, rich girl, the man becoming a woman, the woman turning into a man, the warring families etc., everything is there in Shakespeare.'
Naseeruddin Shah further critiqued the industry's longstanding tendency to lift directly from Shakespeare without acknowledgment: 'And we've gone so far away from it that it's difficult to recognize the source of the factors Hindi films have always borrowed. But never have we admitted that we are stealing from old Mr. William and tried to pass it off as our own. And many times it has passed off. As Javed Akhtar says, 'The only original thing is that whose source has not been discovered.' Well, I don't agree with that statement, but it shows, it indicates, the attitude of our Bombay filmwalas.'
It was only after reading the script that he became convinced that Omkara was a far more grounded and authentic adaptation than even Maqbool. 'So Othello, which is not my favourite play among Shakespeare's play, I was very sceptical until I read the script and realized that it's perhaps a better adaptation than the Maqbool one. It rings more true to me, and because I am from UP, I've seen people like that. Making films about the Bombay underworld is always very dicey because I've never met a person from the underworld and I don't know what they're like. But about the UP gangsters I've seen, my family belongs to a small place near Meerut, and I've seen these kinds of things operating. The UP kind of strong-arm characters I have happened to see a lot of, and the depiction of that world rings very true in Vishal's adaptation.'
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Discussing Omkara's interpretation of Shakespeare's most enigmatic villain, Iago, known in Omkara as Langda Tyagi, Naseeruddin Shah praised Vishal Bhardwaj and his writers for giving depth and motive to characters who were originally left ambiguous. 'And secondly, the character of Iago, which is one of the perennial enigmas of literature, a villain without a motivation at all, and volumes have been written about it. I think it's a bit presumptuous to say that they've improved upon Shakespeare, but they've certainly given both Iago and Othello much more reason to behave the way they do in this script. And I stand by this statement: when I read the play Othello, it strikes me that this man Othello is a complete idiot. He is nothing like a tragic hero, he is a complete idiot. In fact, it comes across almost as a racist play at times. But Vishal seems to have had a better understanding of jealousy than poor old William.'
Today, Omkara is widely considered a cult classic. From Saif Ali Khan's career-defining performance as Langda Tyagi to the brooding, combustible chemistry among its ensemble cast, including Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma, Vivek Oberoi, and Bipasha Basu, the film has only grown in stature. Its earthy dialogue, unforgettable one-liners, and razor-sharp writing continue to resonate. And of course, Gulzar's lyrical brilliance in the soundtrack, from 'Beedi' to 'Naina Thag Lenge', helped immortalize the film's mood in Indian pop culture.