That’s what the film was about: embracing what the world has ahead of you, but don’t forget your roots.Īnupam Kher: The name of the film is given by my wife. Kajol: I think when Adi wrote the film, he meant it to show that families are the way they are everywhere. So the voices belong to us, but the words and feelings are all his, to be honest. Adi had a much clearer vision where he was going with it and what he wanted to say in it. Shah Rukh Khan: It was a set of friends just having fun.with the material.
Chopra, “Can I use their real names in the movie?” And when Raj is saying, “I just failed,” and I introduce him to our “ancestors” in paintings on the wall, that was similar to my own family.My own uncle had failed in 7th/8th grade. When we sort of clap hands and do gibberish words with each other, I invented those words on the set. Even the flower that sprays water on Kajol’s face, we hadn’t told her what would happen.Īnupam Kher: That’s one thing that is fantastic about Shah Rukh: He is a very affectionate, easy person. It is a call for pigeons I had heard in Delhi, so I added it. And we had this really funny scene where we are both awkwardly going “aao, aao” to the pigeons. There was this scene with Amrish Puri where he was feeding the pigeons. Shah Rukh Khan: There were several improv moments. I don’t know what it’s like to get drunk. I don’t believe this myself.” Because I’m a complete teetotaler. There was no part that I heard that I did not feel completely there, and present, and completely part of the film.There is one song where I wasn’t sure about how it would be taken on screen: “Zara Sa Jhoom Loon Main.” I didn’t think I looked drunk at all, and I was like, “This is not gonna work. Kajol: I loved the script, from beginning to end. very intelligently represented NRIs and Londoners and the typical Punjabi.
respected the girl and her parents, especially her father. But here, the boy was a very idealistic person. , it was a typical Romeo and Juliet concept: The parents aren’t happy with who you are the world wanted to be united, and the so-called “forces against you” were the parents. (Image credit: Yash Raj Productions) The script: Aditya Chopra quite literally rewrote the Hindi rom-com with a unique screenplay that challenged Bollywood stereotypes and the meaning of happily-ever-after.Īnupam Kher (supporting actor, Dharamvir Malhotra): The script was very, very fresh. It doesn’t mean we’re not desi anymore it doesn’t mean that our roots have been severed.” And, of course, it works for the people who are still living in India because it reconfirms this is the original land of value and beauty and song and dance and all the rest of it.
It appealed to people in the West because all the NRIs felt like “Just because we live here doesn’t mean we lost our Indian-ness. A lot of external factors worked for the film: the novelty of a modern rom-com, for example, and liberalization.Īnupama Chopra: It’s such a seductive fantasy.
Shah Rukh Khan (lead actor, Raj Malhotra): This film came at a time when the audiences were getting more receptive to a story like DDLJ and a pairing like mine and Kajol’s. Here’s a guy who’s born and bred in the U.K., and yet he turns out to be more Hindustani than the guy who was raised in Punjab. Here’s a guy who’s obviously flirtatious. And here was this film that completely turned this on its head, because here’s a guy who is buying beer in the first few minutes of the film. In films like Purab Aur Paschim or Des Pardes, it was the person from India who showed the Indian in the West what Indian values were. That’s a tough one to get because you are trying to make the characters a bit real, which was a new thing, which Aditya Chopra started.Īnupama Chopra: Traditionally, the West had been portrayed as a sort of decadent hotbed of sin in Hindi movies. Manish Malhotra (costume designer): There was a lot of glamour. Sharmistha Roy (art director): This wasn’t any part of our Indian genre, in terms of visuals.