Beyond doubt Tabu has done a marvellous job of playing a Kolkata-born, thoroughly confused Bengali in America, in Mira Nair's The Namesake, but everyone knows that the original choice for the role was Rani Mukherji.

According to Mira Nair, Rani didn't do the film because she didn't see her ageing in the film. "For The Namesake I wonder if Rani would have been comfortable aging far older than she is. The heroine in my film has to go from 21 to 50," she says.

What many don't know is that Rani opted out of The Namesake more because of Abhishek Bachchan than anything else.

Abhishek was initially supposed to do the part of Rani's son, the namesake of Nikolai Gogol (finally played by Kal Penn), but on realizing that the script included one semi-nude scene and some kisses, Abhishek backed out saying he was too uncomfortable to do the needful on screen.

But Mira was in for another piece of bad news when Rani decided to take her cue from Abhishek Bachchan and opted out of the film too.