Sonali Joshi Pitale (MID-DAY; June 25, 2015)

When Rekha abandoned Abhishek Kapoor’s Fitoor midway last month, Tabu stepped in as her replacement. And if industry sources are to be believed, it took barely five hours on the makers’ part to convince Tabu to take up the role. This could well be a record of sorts.

An insider says, “A crisis situation emerged after Rekha decided to walk out of the film. The schedule was at risk of going haywire. In fact, the team had even decided to put off the shoot for a month should Tabu refuse to replace her. We had the dates of other actors, including Katrina Kaif’s, and canceling the shoot would have cost us a lot.”

It is said that actress had just finished shooting for her portion in the Ajay Devgn-starrer Drishyam when the makers of Fitoor approached her to take up the Begum’s role. Another source says, “Tabu heard out what the character was all about and said yes to the project. As she had wrapped up Drishyam, there was no issue with her dates. However, we were apprehensive that she might take time to work on her look and costumes. But in five hours flat, she finished her look test, finalised her outfits and was ready to shoot.”

Both Tabu and Abhishek did not respond to our text messages.