Exclusive! This is how Irrfan Khan and Anup Singh roped in Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani for The Song of Scorpions

Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani is the female lead in Irrfan Khan's last theatre release, The Song of Scorpions. The director of the film, Anup Singh, shares the story behind how they met the actress and cast her for the film.

Anup told OTTplay, "Irrfan and I were at an international film festival for the screening of our film Qissa. After the screening and audience interaction, we saw a beautiful lady walking towards us as we were walking down the podium. She smiled at us and asked, 'Coffee?' Of course, we could not say no to Golshifteh Farahani, so we sat down for a coffee, and the conversation was about cinema, art, and culture."

He added, "We attended a couple of screenings together and shared our experience. There was a lot of exchange of thoughts going on. Spending quality time with her and talking about performing arts and more, we got a deeper understanding of each other. She is an actress from Iran who is in exile because the Iranian government objected to one of her works. When she started talking about not returning to her country and seeing her parents for a long time, we felt like she was talking about the character Nooran in The Song of Scorpions."

"At the time, we did not tell her anything about the story of the film or the fact that we even had a script. Being a trained singer, she started singing a song for us, and I remember Irrfan looking at me with a smile. We knew that we had found Nooran. When we offered Golshifteh the film, she was excited and quickly got on board," added Anup.

The Song of Scorpions is releasing in theatres in India on April 28.-