Long before Shah Rukh Khan became the superstar who headlines record-breaking films, he was the fiercely loyal friend who didn’t think twice before standing up for people he cared about. A newly resurfaced
interview reveals one such fiery moment from SRK’s early years – a phone call that turned into a full-blown Delhi-style showdown, complete with choicest abuses.
When someone messed with SRK on the phone
Producer Viveck Vaswani shared how Shah Rukh was being pushed for a film he didn’t want to do. That is when a man associated with Feroz Khan tried forcing his way to SRK through Vaswani.
Vaswani recalled, “There was a man called Vasi Khan, who was Feroz Khan’s associate director. He called me Shah Rukh’s secretary on the phone and said, ‘Tu kaun hai? Shah Rukh se baat nahi karwane wala?’ Now Shah Rukh accidentally heard this, and he picked up the phone, and he gave him the kind of bad words from Delhi that I had never heard. He told me, ‘If this guy calls again, I will go and beat him up.’”
Why the fight mattered so much
SRK didn’t want to work with Mahesh Bhatt at the time. Vaswani said,
“With great respect for Bhatt sahab, he told him, ‘Your kind of cinema and my kind of cinema don’t match.’” But all of this happened while Yash Johar was going through a terrible financial phase. Dharma Productions needed a hit or they would lose everything.
Shah Rukh agreed for Yash Johar
It was only when Vaswani told him what the Johars were facing, that SRK changed his mind. That decision gave Dharma a film and marked the beginning of the legendary SRK-Karan bond we see today.
“Shah Rukh was shooting at Mehboob Studios, and I went there to ask him. I told him about Yash, and Shah Rukh agreed, but the moment he heard Bhatt sahab’s name, he said no. I told him the situation, and that is how the film Duplicate was born. Bhatt sahab was hardly on the set for the film, and it was Karan and Shah Rukh who made the film,” said Vaswani.
