Pankaj Tripathi tears up talking about his love for Manoj Bajpayee, says he took his slippers from a hotel
Pankaj Tripathi warmed everyone’s hearts when he recently appeared on The Kapil Sharma Show with his idol Manoj Bajpayee. The Sacred Games actor talked about Manoj with great admiration and got emotional recounting an old episode from their lives.
Host Kapil asked the two about an incident from many years ago when Pankaj stole Manoj’s slippers from a hotel. Manoj said that Pankaj told him this story when they were working together on Anurag Kashyap’s film Gangs of Wasseypur. Pankaj was working as a kitchen supervisor at Hotel Maurya many years ago when Manoj had arrived for a stay. Pankaj reminded him how Manoj had lost his slippers when he was staying at the hotel and told him that he took them.
Pankaj said that was not how it happened and gave a cleared version of the story to the audience. “I got a call that Manoj ji is here. I used to do theatre back then so the kitchen staff knew it. I told them that whenever he orders anything from his room, I’ll be the one to take it. So I went there, met bhaiyya, said ‘Pranaam, even I am into theatre’, touched his feet and left the room. Next day he checked out and left for the airport. But he left a hawai chappal behind. The housekeeping supervisor said ‘Are! Your Manoj bhai is gone but he left his chappal here’. I said don’t submit it, give it to me,” he said as the audience broke into laughter.
“Kyun? Eklavya ki tarah agar main inke khadau mein apna paer daal lu (Why? If like Eklavya I, too, could put my feet in his slipper)...” Pankaj said but his voice broke as he got emotional. He tilted his head back to hide his tears. Everyone in the audience applauded him and his love for Manoj, who is seen giving a him a hug in the next clip. The audience then gives the two a standing ovation.
Pankaj has come a long way since Hotel Maurya. He is now one of the most beloved actors of the country with titles like Sacred Games, Mirzapur, Newton, Gurgaon and Stree to his credit. He will soon be seen as Janhvi Kapoor’s father in Gunjan Saxena biopic.
“I am 44 years old and India knows me now. Better late than never,” he said in a recent interview. “I have faced the same struggles that any actor faces. My difficulties were no different than the others. I come from a non-filmy background and I am a small village boy, so the challenges were a little more. I think that is organic and I have no complaints, because that happens in every field and not just in acting,” Pankaj told IANS.
Meanwhile, Manoj’s Amazon Prime show The Family Man opened to good reviews on Friday. He says although the digital entertainment space offers creative people the scope to experiment more than the big screen, as an actor he waited for the right script to enter the medium, rather than join the trend as any other actors.
“I am one of those actors who are constantly experimenting with choices. I did many short films that were released on digital platforms, and those narratives were quite unique. But I was waiting for the right kind of script to start my journey in the digital space. The web series is a new format in the entertainment business, and I wanted to do something different and interesting here,” Manoj told IANS.