'They Weren’t Ready To Pay...': Why Indian Actor 'Skipped' Big Role Opposite Tom Cruise In Digger

Tom Cruise is set for his first non-franchise role in over a decade in the upcoming film Digger. The drama is helmed by Oscar winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu of The Revenant and Birdman fame. With its release date set for October 2, Digger's trailer reveal has made it one of the biggest films to watch out for this year. Cruise stars in it as Digger Rockwell, an oil mafia boss whose company has triggered an ecological disaster with the potential to start a nuclear war. Riz Ahmed plays Ganesh, among the few Rockwell trusts to salvage the situation.

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In the Digger trailer, Cruise's physical transformation for the role has become the highlight. Riz Ahmed also features in the movie in a pivotal part. After the movie's trailer dropped online, comedian and actor Vir Das shared in a now-deleted X post that he also auditioned for the role in Digger that finally went to Ahmed. Another video has gone viral in which Malayalam star Fahadh Faasil spoke about how he was approached for Digger but couldn't be a part of the movie.

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Faasil, speaking to Cue studio last year, had revealed that while his audition for Digger went well, Iñárritu was not convinced by his accent and had to be in the US to work on it for months. “To perfect the accent, I was told to go to the US and stay there for three or four months. But they weren’t ready to pay for that. That’s why I skipped it. Otherwise, I would have gone running. The commercial aspects of it wouldn’t have worked out. Also, to bother so much for an accent, I didn’t feel that kind of fire for it,” he said.