New Delhi. The story of the great war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas was shown brilliantly in Doordarshan's mythological show Mahabharat. Director BR Chopra's Mahabharat is still discussed. The main reason for this is the star cast of this serial. From Arjun to Duryodhan, every character of Mahabharat was special in its own way. 

But do you know that this star cast of Mahabharat was finalized after more than 3000 auditions and it took many years. This was revealed by the casting director of the show Goofy Paintal. 
This is how the iconic star cast of Mahabharata was prepared

Making a film or serial on the Mahabharata epic is quite challenging in today's time. So just imagine how BR Chopra and his team created the Mahabharata for the small screen in the 80s. While making a mythological show, the most important thing is taken care of its star cast so that they can do justice to their characters. 

In the year 2020, Goofy Paintal, the casting director and actor of Mahabharata, spoke openly about the actors of the show. Actually, Goofy was a part of comedian Kapil Sharma's show The Kapil Sharma Show. Other characters of Mahabharata were also present with him. 

During this, Goofy told that the preparations for casting of Mahabharat started in the year 1984 and it continued till the end of 1986. During this period, in about two and a half years, we took more than 3500 auditions, after which these actors were finalized. In this way, after hard work, we got the star cast of Mahabharat. Let us tell you that Mahabharat was telecasted for the first time on Doordarshan in 1988.

Goofy played this character in Mahabharata 

Not just the casting director, Goofy Paintal also played the important role of Mama Shakuni in Mahabharata. The way Goofy played this role is appreciated even today. Although he is not among us today, he is always remembered as Shakuni Mama of Mahabharata. 

Who played which role in Mahabharata

The list of star cast in this serial was quite long. The special thing was that every actor gave his 100% performance in his role. If we look at who played which character in  Mahabharat , then their names are as follows-

Mukesh Khanna- Bhishma Pitamaha

Arjun- Feroz Khan

Duryodhan - Puneet Issar

Karan- Pankaj Dheer

Draupadi - Roopa Ganguly 

Shri Krishna - Nitish Bharadwaj

Shakuni- Goofy Paintal

Yudhishthira - Gajendra Chauhan

Bhim- Praveen Kumar

nazneen-kunti

Dhritarashtra - Girija Shankar

Dronacharya- Surendra Pal

Gandhari - Runuka Israni

This star cast is included in the list of major actors of Mahabharata. It is known that after Doordarshan, many other TV channels also made shows on Mahabharata, but the popularity that BR Chopra's Mahabharata got, no one else has been able to get it till now.