When SRK Didn’t Want To Do Aditya Chopra’s DDLJ

“Bade bade deshon mein aaisi choti choti baatein hoti rehti hain”. We can’t imagine hearing this dialogue in anybody else’s voice but in Shah Rukh Khan’s. One can not talk about Bollywood without mentioning DDLJ and the film re-releasing in the theaters aftyer so many years of its release is proof. 

For most of his career Shah Rukh Khan has been a romantic hero and hence is lovingly called as ‘The King of Romance’. You would be surprised to know that the actor wanted to steer clear from romantic films and wanted to do action. It was director Aditya Chopra who pestered SRK and made him sign ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’ which shaped his career as a romantic hero. 

In Shah Rukh’s words, he feels like Aditya “fooled” him and “converted him into a lover”. After ‘Darr’ SRK was expecting that Aditya Chopra will offer him an action movie but to his surprise, he offered him a very sweet, “namby pamby film”. Although Shah Rukh didn’t have any like or dislike for the film but DDLJ wasn’t the story that he wanted to hear. 

When SRK was hesitant about saying yes to DDLJ, Aditya Chopra told him that there is something about his eyes and that his “eyes have something that cannot be wasted on action (truer words have never been spoked).”

When Aditya completed the script of DDLJ, he knew exactly who he wanted as a hero for his debut film as a director. Aditya Chopra said that he was looking for a very “unpredictable romantic hero” and SRK being a soft guy who pretended to be a macho man was the perfect fit for the role. 

Aditya Chopra recalled an years old incident and said, “ I kept going every week, or two or three days to different sets of his. He was always very nice to me but he was not committing. I was like now at the edge of my patience. He does not know how to say no so should I be moving on now?”

 Just the moment when Adi Chopra thought of dropping Shah Ruklh and approaching someone else for the film a strange incident took place. Recalling the same Aditya said, “It was on the sets of a film called ‘Trimurti’. There  was this very old and fragile lady who went to him and said, “Son, you do such great work, I like it a lot but you die in every film and in every film you are murdered, I don’t like that” (we mean was she an angel sent from heaven who convinced SRK to do DDLJ?).

He further said, “I told Shah Rukh, I know you are feeling hesitant and you are not able to say no to me. You might choose not to do this, which I think is completely fine but I would advise you not to shut your doors on never doing a love story. In this country, a superstar will only be the person who will be every mother’s son, every sister’s brother and every college girl’s fantasy. What you just heard that woman say was that there’s a lot of love that she is giving you but there’s a different persona that she sees and she’s not getting.”

Following this, Shah Rukh Khan said yes to the film and ‘Dil Wale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’ created history by not just becoming a box office success but it’s not just a movie but an emotion. 

No matter what generation you belong to, ‘Tujhe dekha to ye jana sanam’ is a melody that we all hmmm.

The film made just a great impact that it was recently re-released in the theaters.