Nana Patekar & Rajpal Yadav Movies Together List — 5 Films

The shape of the work

The 2010s account for 60% of everything they made together. The 2000s belonged to Darna Mana Hai; the 2020s to Vanvaas. Nana Patekar acted in every film; Rajpal Yadav acted in all of them. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• They first met on the set of Darna Mana Hai (2003), a horror anthology where both played characters in different segments. They didn't share a single scene together in that film — but director Prawaal Raman later said their off-screen banter was so electric that he promised to cast them as a pair in something bigger. That promise never materialized, but they kept working together anyway.
• In Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal (2012), Nana played the straight-faced, perpetually irritated village strongman, while Rajpal played the hyperactive, scam-happy sidekick. The trick: Nana would deliberately slow down his dialogue delivery mid-scene, forcing Rajpal to fill the silence with frantic improvisation. Rajpal later admitted in an interview that Nana's pauses made him 'work twice as hard' — and that's what made their comedy land.
• Housefull 4 (2019) was the only hit they made together — and it directly led to the casting of both actors in Vanvaas (2024). Producer Nadiadwala saw their reincarnation-era comic timing in Housefull 4 and greenlit Vanvaas specifically as a two-hander for them, with no other major star. Without that hit, Vanvaas likely never gets made.
• On the sets of Vanvaas (2024), shot in a remote Uttarakhand village, Nana and Rajpal shared a room for 45 days. Rajpal cooked basic meals (dal-chawal) every night because Nana refused to eat hotel food. They never spoke about acting after pack-up — only about farming, which both are obsessed with. Nana even gifted Rajpal a sapling of his favourite mango tree after the shoot wrapped.
• "Nana sahab doesn't act with you. He acts at you. You have to catch his energy like a ball and throw it back. If you blink, you lose the scene." — Rajpal Yadav, in a 2024 interview with Film Companion, describing their dynamic on Vanvaas.