Neil Nitin Mukesh was offered a role in Saif Ali Khan’s second home production, Agent Vinod, written and directed by Sriram Raghavan. It was a minor part that was eventually edited out.

The actor confirms this: “Yes, I had heard a narration after Sriram finished with the script. But the character that he offered me didn’t turn out to be as powerful as Sriram had initially drawn it out to be.”

The actor, who considers himself Raghavan’s protégé, also says that he was offered a role in the director-writer’s Happy Birthday that John Abraham is doing now. “When we were filming Johnny Gaddar, Sriram had discussed both subjects with me, but things didn’t work out,” Mukesh says. “Sriram is like God to me. I did a nine-hour audition for him for my debut film. I trust his sensibilities and we have decided that at the next opportunity, we will do a film together again.”

For the moment, the actor, who was recently seen in Lafangey Parindey, is upbeat about Vishal Bharadwaj’s Saat Khoon Maaf in which he plays one of Priyanka Chopra’s seven husbands and Abbas-Mustan’s remake of the Italian Job. He says, “Other than that, I’m just reading scripts. I do one film at a time.”