Exactly Rs 15 lakh! This is the amount reached by the actress herself. And which she apparently carried, in cash, onto Prakash Jha’s sets of Rajniti recently when she thought she might have to compensate the filmmaker for wasting one day’s shooting.

The story goes that Katz, the only female character in Jha’s heavyduty set-up headed by Nana Patekar, Ajay Devgn, Manoj Bajpayee, Randhir Kapoor and Arjun Rampal, is atrocious in her delivery of Hindi dialogue. And in Rajniti, which she is very excited about, the actress is the focal point of the script and has a lot of lines. But Katz has been taking her Hindi dialogue delivery lessons seriously and is hellbent on getting the accent and pronunciation right.

Now comes the twist. On one particular day during her recent stint in Bhopal, Katz found herself staring at sheets of lengthy dialogues and realised she would need an extra day to prepare if she was to get it right. So, she went up to Jha and told him about her predicament. And even before the filmmaker, who’s had enough grief with this film, could bat an eyelid, the professional girl volunteered to compensate him for her’s day’s shooting expenses.

Jha confirmed the story. “It was a truly professional gesture and I’m very touched,’’ he said. Of course, he didn’t take the money and gave his actress the one extra day she needed. Only to be rewarded on day two. Unit hands say that Katrina had taken it as a challenge and knew every dialogue pat. She surprised everyone present on the set with her spoken lines. And so, continues to be the flavour of the season.