Govinda may have ruled the box office in the 1990s, but as time passed, his reputation took a hit, not just because of a string of flops, but also due to his notorious lateness on set. Many of his colleagues have spoken about it over the years, and now actor Rajat Bedi has revisited one such incident involving Sanjay Dutt during the shooting of ‘Jodi No. 1’. Bedi has been in the news lately for his comeback with Aryan Khan‘s show ‘The Ba***ds Of Bollywood’. In an interview with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel, Rajat shared how Govinda’s delay once left Sanjay waiting for nearly nine hours, eventually forcing director David Dhawan to alter the scene they were supposed to film. Recalling the episode, Rajat described Govinda as a “great human being” who nonetheless had “a very big problem.” He explained, “He had taken on too much work. In ‘Jodi No 1’, David was supposed to start shooting at 7 am but Sanjay Dutt and I were there at 6 in the morning for some reason.”The two arrived early, only to discover that most of the crew hadn’t even reached. “David and all of us were waiting for Govinda to come so we can start working. Then we got to know that Govinda is at home. So someone from the set was sent to his house and this person was sitting outside to get him to the set,” Rajat said. Hours went by, and the wait began testing everyone’s patience. “By the time it was 2 pm, Sanjay was freaking out,” he shared, mimicking Sanjay’s frustration on set.
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However, the situation took an unexpected turn when they discovered that Govinda wasn’t even in Mumbai. “Nobody knew he was flying from Hyderabad and coming straight to the set at 3 pm. In those days, nobody would know where he was because at that time, he would do 4-5 shifts,” Rajat revealed.When Govinda finally arrived, he was ready to shoot. But as the assistant handed the scene over, Sanjay noticed he had far more dialogue than Govinda. That didn’t sit well with him. “Sanju started abusing the assistant and told him, you give these lines to Govinda, I will not do this. So the whole scene changed on the spot,” Rajat recalled.Yet, despite the chaos and the long wait, Govinda’s brilliance in front of the camera shone through. Once the camera rolled, he completed the entire scene in just two hours. As Rajat put it simply, “He is a performer.”
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