A five-year-old tweet by author Chetan Bhagat has suddenly gone viral on Twitter where he announces Sushant Singh Rajput as the lead actor of the movie based on his book Half Girlfriend. Netizens are now sharing Bhagat’s tweet and blaming nepotism for Arjun Kapoor eventually replacing Sushant Singh Rajput as the film’s lead actor.
The actor died by suicide last week, at the age of 34. He was suffering from depression. Following his death, the focus has once again been set on nepotism in the film industry.
“So happy to share @itsSSR will play lead in @mohit11481 directed Half Girlfriend. Shooting begins 1Q16,” reads Chetan Bhagat’s now viral 2015 tweet.
Sharing this tweet, a user wrote: “So it was supposed to be Sushant in Half Girlfriend but finally given to Starkid Arjun Kapoor. On whose direction?”
Another user write, “Aditya replaced shushant….then Ranveer replaced shushant….then legendry arjun kapoor replaced shushant…..ok how many of u believe this is just a coincidence or injustice with @itsSSR ….Pls support shushant.”
However, the real reason was Sushant himself had opted out of Half Girlfriend, as per his own interview, as its dates clashed with other films he was doing then.
“See, I was doing many films and they are all releasing now. I don’t want to name them. What happens is, when I give my word to someone and he’s delaying (not because he wants to, but because of a particular reason) and I get to understand it, I won’t ditch. So be it the biggest film with the biggest studio or the smallest film, I won’t leave another film. So unfortunately, because of the two films that I was doing and that didn’t happen, I lost out on 12 films in the last one year,” Sushant had reportedly said in a 2016 interview.
The late actor had further clarified, “I said yes to Dinesh Vijan long before Half Girlfriend was even offered to me. And because of a big confusion (again, because of someone else), we were told that we could shoot both films simultaneously. But it wasn’t the case because both directors wanted a particular month. So since I had said yes to Dinesh first, I had to opt out of Mohit’s film.”