At a session during the Times Litfest in Delhi, writer Juhi Chaturvedi recalled working with Irrfan in Piku. “My first interaction with Irrfan was during my advertising days. It was only a two-day shoot, and one doesn’t recognise the brilliance of an actor in such a short time. When Piku happened, and I wrote Rana (his character), I felt it was a character only Irrfan could do,” she said, adding, “When Irrfan read the script, the first thing he said was, ‘Main karoon agar yeh (role) toh log samajh payenge isko?’ His starting point was not that role itna chota hai, yeh toh actually Deepika aur Amitabh ki film hai aur mujhe toh tum log driver le rahe ho. But he said, ‘Log samajh paayenge iss character ko?’ I said, ‘Shayad samajh hi jayenge. If you’ll do it, then we can see if we should write more about this character’. He was like, ‘Nahi, main lines badhane ke liye nahi keh raha hoon. Lekin itna sa role hai, tum ismein kya soch rahi ho aisa ki main kar doon’. I told him, ‘Sir, maine itna detail mein nahi socha hai ki yeh role aap hi kyun kare, lekin ye insaan aap hi hain’. He said, ‘Achha? Main ek baar aur padhta hoon script’.”

Juhi said that he had a lot of questions to understand Piku (Deepika Padukone) and Bhashkor Banerjee’s (Amitabh Bachchan) characters, adding that since Deepika, Amitabh and Irrfan were working with each other for the first time, “there was a bit of awkwardness”.

“Mr Bachchan would read (rehearse) his lines so loudly on the set that he would shake everyone’s confidence. Language was not on Deepika’s side and there is Irrfan, who is brilliant and she was trying to figure out how she should pitch. Irrfan was just amused ki kya kar rahe hai and it shows in the film. With every scene, he was also trying to decode Mr Bachchan. Their chemistry was amazing.”