By: Entertainment DeskNew Delhi | Updated: September 11, 2025 04:56 PM IST 4 min readSuniel Shetty and Mahesh Manjrekar had cops called on them while they were in Los Angeles after 9/11.Filmmaker Sanjay Gupta said that he was a ‘kid in a toy store’ when he was in pre-production on his film Kaante in Los Angeles. He handpicked locations from films such as Se7en and The Usual Suspects, and was excited to shoot at them. But then, 9/11 happened, and all his permissions were revoked overnight. Things went from bad to worse for him and his crew of brown people, as they were racially profiled in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. The profiling became so unbearable that Amitabh Bachchan stopped going out, preferring to stay in his hotel room.Appearing on Cyrus Broacha’s podcast, Sanjay Gupta said, “Ironically, in Kaante, apart from that iconic walk in the title sequence, I haven’t shot a single frame in Beverly Hills. I had every reference, every location finalised. But Downtown is an industrial area. So the minute 9/11 happened, they locked down everything. Most of our permissions were cancelled. Mr Bachchan had gone to the Morocco Film Festival, where he was receiving a lifetime achievement award. On September 11, he was on a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles. Two hours into the flight, it was turned around.”Sanjay said that after the attacks, the Americans ‘went into major panic mode’. He continued, “Now, Suniel Shetty and Mahesh Manjrekar used to get ready in the hotel and then come to the set. They had breakfast at the hotel, and then they got into the elevator. The elevator stops at another floor, and this old couple gets in. By the time they’ve gone to the lobby, the couple has stopped breathing. They thought two black Osamas were standing behind them. These two guys went and sat in the car, and started driving towards the location. Midway, a cop car came and stopped them.”Also read – Bollywood couple demands 11 vanity vans, separate kitchens, gyms; Amitabh Bachchan is only one who doesn’t, says Sanjay Gupta: ‘Ek mein saab nanga baithte hain’Sanjay said that the couple ‘went running to the reception’, and called 911 on Suniel Shetty and Mahesh Manjrekar because they looked suspicious. “Thank God this was 2001 and there was internet. Suniel Shetty could show who he was, but who was Mahesh Manjrekar?” Sanjay joked. He added, “Amit ji was the only actor staying at St Regis. Every day, after pack up, Amit ji would just walk around the mall in the same complex. That was his routine. One day, he said, ‘I’ve stopped going down. I just sit in my room. Everywhere I go, people are staring and giving me these dirty looks’.”Not too long ago, in a chat with former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar, Suniel Shetty had also recalled the same story. “I was walking into the hotel, got into the lift, and realised I had forgotten my keys. This American gentleman was there. He kept looking at me, and I asked, ‘Do you have the keys? Because I have forgotten mine, and my staff has gone out.’ He ran out and created a commotion. Suddenly, the cops arrived, gunmen from the street, and they said, ‘Down or we shoot,’” he said, adding, “I didn’t know what was happening. So I had to go down on my knees. They handcuffed me. And that’s when the production team came, and one of the managers—a Pakistani gentleman at the hotel—stepped in and said, ‘He is an actor.’ All that we went through at that time was insane. I didn’t know what was going to happen next because there was so much commotion, and my beard was that jawline beard. I thought he didn’t understand the language. Maybe he didn’t speak English. So I gestured ‘key, lift,’ but it worked against me.”Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd