4 minutes of readingNew DelhiFebruary 4, 2026 08:30 pm IST
After Govinda experienced a dip in his career in the early 2000s, he tried to make a comeback by appearing in many comic roles, but it was almost as if the public had locked him into their memory as the “number one hero” and didn’t want to move on from that. However, Govinda appeared in some supporting roles Towards the end of the decade, but none of these roles helped him revive his career. One such role was in Mani Ratnam’s Raavan in 2010, where Govinda appeared in a supporting role as Sanjeevani Kumar. However, one of his co-stars in the film recently shared that his role, along with many others, was cut from the film.
Tejaswini Kolhapure, who recently spoke to Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel shared that many actors’ roles were cut on the editing table during Raavan. Recalling his experience, he said he hoped “this film would change the course of my career.” However, that did not happen. She shared that she was on location, near Cochin, for almost three months, but what they filmed and what they conveyed to her were completely different. “They didn’t give me the script beforehand, so when I got it there and read it, I felt like I should go,” he said.
Tejaswini recalled that she had a meeting with the film’s team in Bombay and what they told him was “completely different.” “But I had signed a contract and I didn’t want to get into fights, trouble and complications. So I made the movie,” he recalled. She shared that when she read the script on reaching the location, she called Anurag Kashyap, whom she was friends with since she worked with him in Paanch. “I told him I was very stressed. He calmed me down, told me to relax and just do my job diligently,” she said.
However, things changed even more when he was asked to come to the dub. Upon arriving at the studio, he only recorded one dialogue and was told that his work was done. When she asked about the other scenes, she was given a vague answer, leading her to believe that her role had been cut from the film. “By then I came to know that they had changed the film. I was completely shocked. What they told me was not in the script and what was in the script was not in the film. Everything had changed,” she shared and added, “I accepted that I don’t have any role in this film. And not just me, Govinda, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Sachin Khedekar, everyone’s roles were cut. That was a big setback,” she shared.
When asked if he had listened to the film during narration before signing the dotted line, he shared that he never received any narration. “There was no narration. They just threw fragments at you. They have all this: ‘They can’t really reveal the story’… So obviously, you go in with that confidence,” he said, recalling that he had read some scenes that he thought were “very good.” “I was playing Ravi Kishan’s wife, Abhishek’s bhabhi in the film, so I had scenes with him, with Aishwarya, but all that was cut,” she shared.
Tejaswini shared that she had no connection with Mani Ratnam, so she could never ask him what had happened, so she just let this episode pass.