The 18th season of Bigg Boss ended over the weekend and Karanvir Mehra emerged as the winner. But the finale also saw speculations about Salman arriving late on the sets, which led to Akshay Kumar, who was supposed to shoot a segment with him, having to leave.
Akshay had to promote his upcoming film Sky Force with his co-star Veer Paharia. After Akshay left, Veer shot the promotional segment with Salman alone. Earlier reports suggested that Salman was several hours late, but Akshay recently revealed more details about the episode at a press conference in New Delhi. He said that he already had some commitments due to which he had to leave.
When asked about Salman’s delay, which led to his cancelled appearance on the show, Akshay told the gathered media, “He was not that late. I did reach, yes. He was a little late, because he had some personal work. And then we talked about it, and he told me that he was about 35 to 40 minutes late. And what happened was that I had to leave. So then we talked about it, and I left, but Veer was there, so I shot with him.”
Akshay has a reputation for being punctual, while many of Salman’s past collaborators have mentioned that he rarely arrives on time. Filmmaker Anees Bazmee, who has worked with both of them, told Lehren Retro in an interview, “Akshay is a very punctual guy. We are always worried while working with him because if he says we will start work at 7 am, he will be there at 7 am. And we are not used to waking up at 6-7 am… Sometimes, we are very relaxed with Salman bhai because he will show up around 1 am, have lunch but then he will stay till the end of the day.”
According to a Hindustan Times source, “Akshay being a punctual guy reached the set for the shoot at his scheduled time, around 2:15 am. But Salman had not arrived by then. Akshay waited for an hour for Salman to arrive, but he had a trial screening of Jolly LLB 3 in his schedule. So, after waiting for an hour, Akshay returned without shooting for the show.”
Directed by Sandeep Kewlani and Abhishek Kapoor, the historical war drama Sky Force is produced by Dinesh Vijan, Jyoti Deshpande and Amar Kaushik. Sky Force is based on India’s counter-attack on Pakistan’s Sargodha airbase in the Indo-Pakistani air war of 1965. The film, which also stars Sara Ali Khan and Nimrat Kaur in lead roles, will release on Friday.
