MUMBAI: In 1981, veteran actress Rekha stole everyone’s heart with her portrayal of a courtesan, Umrao Jaan, in the film titled the same. Based on the 1905 Urdu novel Umrao Jaan Ada, the film told the story of the courtesan and her rise to fame. It got Rekha a National Award for Best Actress, so when it was announced that JP Dutta was bringing the novel alive again, there was a lot of excitement around who would play the titular courtesan.

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Finally, it was Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who stepped into the character and although the film failed to perform well at the box-office, Aishwarya did steal hearts with her beauty and grace. Today, it might be difficult to imagine anyone matching up to Rekha like Aishwarya did, but did you know that Aishwarya wasn’t even the first choice to play Umrao Jaan for Dutta?

Well, it’s true. Dutta initially wanted to cast another Miss World, Priyanka Chopra Jonas in the titular role as she was the newcomer at the time who had bowled everyone over with her performances in films like Andaz and Aitraaz. Priyanka had even shown interest in the part and had started preparing for it too, but as Dutta revealed in an interview at that time, it was her packed schedule diary that didn’t let her take on that iconic and memorable role.

Dutta had revealed that he saw Umrao Jaan in Priyanka and tried his best to work around her dates, but he reached a dead end. So, Dutta then once ran into Aishwarya in London where she was preparing for her role of Gayatri Devi for a film, but she showed keenness in portraying the courtesan and even Dutta could see her as Umrao Jaan, also considering her dancing skills. So, then Aishwarya chose this role over Gayatri Devi and came on board.

Priyanka, too, had expressed how much she wanted to play Umrao Jaan but admitted that maybe it wasn’t meant to be. The movie eventually was made and released in 2006 with Aishwarya and Abhishek Bachchan alongside Shabana Azmi, Suniel Shetty, Divya Dutta, Himani Shivpuri and Kulbhushan Kharbanda.

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