FILM · 2018 · INDIA
Andhadhun
21 archived facts 2 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
21 Interesting Facts About Andhadhun
Interesting Facts (20)
- #001
Ayushmann Khurrana, who plays the piano in the film, trained for two months with Los Angeles-based pianist Akshay Verma.
- #002
Khurrana was given a special pair of lenses from London, and he said they distorted his vision "almost 80 percent."
- #003
In one scene, Dr. Swami refers to Tabu as Lady Macbeth, a joke playing on the fact that Tabu played Lady Macbeth in Maqbool (2003), the Hindi retelling of Macbeth.
- #004
When writing the character of Akash, director Sriram Raghavan did not initially have Ayushmann Khurrana in mind; all he wanted was an actor with a sense of music, but he did create the character of Simi with Tabu in mind.
- #005
In the kitchen scene where Simi (Tabu) and Pramod (Anil Dhawan) jokingly record a cooking video, Simi hugs Pramod and her hands are shown covered in red sauce, foreshadowing her involvement in Pramod's murder.
- #006
It was initially going to be titled 'Shoot the Piano Player', but the title was later changed to Andhadhun because no one wanted an English title.
- #007
Raghavan told Khurrana not to watch films featuring a blind protagonist and brought him to the National School for the Blind.
- #008
The scene in which Simi overpowers Dr. Swami and drives the car herself was cut from the final film. The one-minute deleted scene shows how she managed to do this while Akash accidentally turned on the radio.
- #009
Ayushmann Khurrana's character Akash was blind in the second half of the film. This is revealed at the end of the film when he leaves the cafe holding his cane, which has a wooden rabbit on its handle, referring to the rabbit that hit Tabu's car, causing her death and saving Akash's life. It is up to the audience to decide whether the rabbit story is true.
- #010
The title is a play on "andhadhund" (meaning reckless or ruthless) and "a play on blind tune and trance."
- #011
Raghavan had given the story idea to Varun Dhawan while working on 'Badlapur' (2015), but Dhawan was busy with other films.
- #012
Shooting took more than a year because none of the actors were available for a long shooting schedule.
- #013
Raghavan conducted screen tests for the scene in which the protagonist wakes up and realizes he is blind: "There were two parts; the time when you pretend to be blind and the time when you actually are blind; we tried both. I wanted to see what the difference would be in his body language."
- #014
Khurana described it as the most challenging role of his career.
- #015
Raghavan and Biswas were unhappy about translating the dialogue from English into Hindi because they thought in English.
- #016
Hokusai's painting "Great Wave off Kanagawa" is prominently featured behind Akash as he plays the piano for Simi and her dead husband.
- #017
Sriram Raghavan watched the 2010 French short film L'Accordeur (The Piano Tuner), about a blind pianist, in 2013 on the recommendation of his friend, filmmaker Hemanth Rao. Raghavan said that although his film was different, the French film was the "basic germ."
- #018
Ayushmann Khurrana heard about the film from casting director Mukesh Chhabra, so he contacted Raghavan and expressed that he wanted to work with him on a film.
- #019
The actor Zakir Hussain appears in all of director Sriram Raghavan's films, including this one.
- #020
Surti wrote another version of the dialogue because his Hindi was better than the others'.
Deeper Meaning (1)
- #021
The ending implies that Akash really did deliberately strike the empty box with his cane in order to have the cornea transplant, and that the story he told Sophie was therefore fabricated.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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