Apparently Jaya Bachchan was not the first choice to play Rani Mukherjee's mother in Yashraj Films' recent venture, Laaga Chunari Main Daag. It seems that Shabana Azmi had been chosen to play the role, but things did not work out.

If sources are to be believed, Shabana was aghast when she went into the details of the character and realized that, in the film, the mother was aware of the fact that her daughter was into prostitution. Shabana then argued with Pradeep Sarkar, the director. However the director told her that the script would not be changed under any circumstances. Given to understand this, it is believed that Shabana chose to opt out. While Shabana has chosen not to speak about this, Sarkar has admitted that he had chosen Shabana to play the mother's role in his film. However, he has a different reason to offer for getting Jaya to play the role. According to Sarkar, Shabana did not opt out of the movie because she was uncomfortable with the role. Sarkar says that he rehearsed with Shabana. But somewhere during the rehearsals he happened to realize that he needed a softer face to play the mother and hence decided to go ahead with Jaya and not Shabana. Apparently, he then left it to the production house to convey the news to Shabana, telling her that they would not go ahead with her. Shabana took it quite sportingly and is even believed to have called up Rani after the film's release and congratulated her on her performance. Well, all that we can say Shabanaji, is that, it was really no loss!