Actor Deven Bhojani recalled working with Shah Rukh Khan on a film in the 1990s, when SRK was on the cusp of superstardom. They worked again many years later on Rajkumar Hirani’s Dunki, where they picked up right where they’d left off. But Deven recalled that he was a little apprehensive about working with Shah Rukh in the ’90s, because he’d heard some not-so-nice things about him.
In an interview with Laksh Maheshwari, Deven was asked if he had any memories of working with the superstar, and he gladly obliged. “This was right after Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. I was cast as Shah Rukh Khan’s friend. I’d heard about him, that he was this new kid on the block and he had an attitude, I’d also heard that he’d said some not-so-nice things about Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan in interviews. On the first day, I went and introduced myself to the other actors, but I was hesitant about introducing myself to Shah Rukh. What if he said, ‘So what?’ when I told him who I was? So I kept to myself.”
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But then, Deven felt a pat on his back. He continued, “I looked back, and it was Shah Rukh. He said, ‘Hi, I’m Shah Rukh. You were so good in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar’.” Deven was pleasantly surprised to learn that Shah Rukh knew his name, and Shah Rukh told him that he liked the film so much that he made sure to ask director Mansoor Khan the name of each and every cast member. The film that Deven and Shah Rukh worked together on was shot in 1994, but wasn’t released until 2004.
But they got an opportunity to work together again on Dunki, which debuted in 2023. Deven recalled, “He was so warm again, we reminisced about the old days. On the first day, we would address each other as ‘Shah Rukh’ and ‘Deven’, but on the second day, I noticed that he had started calling me ‘Deven sir’. I asked him why he was doing that, and he said, ‘The whole unit is addressing you as Deven sir, I can’t be the only person calling you Deven’. I told him that he doesn’t need to do that because we’re old friends, and I wasn’t calling him ‘Shah Rukh sir’ either, I was calling him ‘Shah Rukh’. He was so warm.”
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