Their friendship translates into great chemistry, film after film, but Shah Rukh Khan didn’t have high hopes for Kajol when they first met.
The actor revealed he thought her unfocused and even warned actor Aamir Khan about working with her.
“When I was working with her in Baazigar, Aamir asked me about her as he wanted to work with her,” Khan said in a interview on Saturday with a group of journalists on the set of the film Dilwale, which reunites the now hit pair of Khan and Kajol.
“I left him a message saying, ‘She is very bad, no focus, you will not be able to work with her’. And then I saw the rushes [first prints made of a film after a period of shooting] in the evening. I kept calling Aamir to clarify. I told him, ‘I don’t know what it is but she is magical on the screen’.”
“Kajol is not technical. She is an honest actor and that’s a great quality. My daughter [Suhana] wants to become an actress and I would want her to learn that. I hope I learn that from Kajol. I can’t explain it but she is something else on screen.”
The actress, 41, recalled how they ended up becoming friends on the set of Baazigar.
“I remember Shah Rukh and other actors had a huge hangover when they came on the sets and I was jabbering away in Marathi to his make-up guy. They were like, ‘What is that voice? It is going to split open our heads’. He was very grumpy but I kept chatting and finally he said, ‘Will you please shut up?’. I think that’s how we became friends.”
Khan interjected saying Kajol had not changed over the years.
“I am not very talkative in [my] personal life. Kajol will have an upper hand when it comes to talking over all of us. Even now, I have to tell her to shut up.”
Khan, who is also the producer of Dilwale, is working round-the-clock to finish in time for its scheduled release on December 18. The film also stars Varun Dhawan, Kriti Sanon, Johnny Lever, Boman Irani, Varun Sharma, Sanjay Mishra and Pankaj Tripathi. With a generous dose of action, comedy and nostalgia-inducing romance between Khan and Kajol, the movie, judging by the rushes that were screened for the press, seems to be a typical Rohit Shetty entertainer.
Kajol said the biggest motivation for her to do the film was the ease that she shared with Khan and director Shetty.
“I wanted to do something that would be unpredictable and different. Something that I had not done before. I liked my role in Dilwale. With Shah Rukh and Rohit, it was in my comfort zone. I can tell them when something is not working. That communication was there,” she said.
“I miss Kajol in every film,” Khan said. “With this film, she gave us 150 days. She had to be away from her children and I know it is a huge sacrifice for a parent.
“We are restless people who want to do more films, earn more money but Kajol is a rested soul. She doesn’t care about these things. We are thankful that she took time out for this movie.”
The pair have collaborated in a number of Bollywood hits such as Karan-Arjun, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham and My Name is Khan.
When asked whether they have changed for the better in the last 20 years, Kajol said, “I hope we have. I don’t talk any less. We have become better actors and better people. I always say he is one of the best actors that we have today. It is a joy to work with him and [it’s] a learning process.”
