Mumbai (Maharashtra): As the Vijay Deverakonda and Ananya Panday starrer pan India film Liger nears its release, the producer of the film Charmme Kaur shared that casting the legendary boxer Mike Tyson was a monumental task. During COIVD, the deal was almost broken before Mike Tyson invited Liger team to Los Angeles and asked them to shoot the film in his backyard.
The talks with Tyson reached a breaking point once during the course of two years of casting. Charmme Kaur in a recent interview said, "It took us two years to sign him on." The discussion started off with his legal and managing teams in 2019. As they were midway through the talks, the Covid-19 pandemic emerged in the 2020, "We sealed the deal after months of numerous Zoom calls. And then, COVID-19 happened."
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And since "India was in the red zone". Tyson's team told her it's a "deal-breaker" because of the uncertainty and strict social distancing rules. "They didn't want to travel all the way to India, and we couldn't have travelled (to the US) either. It was heartbreaking (that things fell apart)," the producer added.
But, Deverakonda, Jagannadh and Kaur didn't leave hope. As the situation improved and things started swinging back to normal after the first wave, Kaur resumed the conversation with Tyson's teams in late 2020.
READ | Vijay Deverakonda flew this lady down from Los Angeles to shoot reel for Liger promotions
"I again got hold of everyone. I made calls at 5 am IST. This went on for a year, after which Mike Tyson said, 'Fine. Come to my backyard and shoot'. We created (a small) team and went to shoot in Las Vegas for a month," said Charmme on signing Mike Tyson for Liger role.
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During an interview, Vijay and Ananya Panday also talked about their camaraderie with Tyson. Ananya recounted one of the incidents and said: "He only kept his arm on my shoulder and I was like, I swear I fell because his hand was so heavy. I was scared earlier, but he was very sweet. I would like to believe that we are friends."
Talking about the incident when Tyson punched Vijay by mistake, the Arjun Readdy star said: "When I reached the set, production team told me that they couldn't find shoes for Tiger sir as his feet size is 14. I have a big feet and mera size 10 hai. When he came to set and said hi, his wrist size was also big."
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He added, "I was worried when I saw his hands, his foot and his neck. When he punched me by mistake during rehearsals, I had a migraine for the whole day. I didn't get knocked out, but body wanted to fall down."
On August 25, Liger will be released in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi.
