Their friendship translates into great chemistry film after film and Shah Rukh Khan, who is reuniting with Kajol after five years in Dilwale, says she is magical on-screen.
“I miss Kajol in every film. 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,” Shah Rukh said.
They may be great friends now but SRK did not have a good impression about Kajol when he first met her.
“When I was working with her in Baazigar, Aamir asked me about her as he wanted to work with her. 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 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 but she is something else on screen.”
Kajol said the biggest reason for her to do the film was the ease that she shared with Shah Rukh and the film’s director Rohit Shetty.
“I wanted to do something that would be unpredictable and different. 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,” she said.
“I remember Shah Rukh and other actors had a huge hangover when they came on the Baazigar 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.”
Shah Rukh interjected with his side of the story, saying Kajol has not changed over the years and he still has to tell her to ‘shut up’.
“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’!
When asked whether they have changed in the last 20 years for the better, 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 a learning process.”
