Aditya Chopra is suspicious of those who aren’t close to him, likes to stay in Yash Raj space: Nikkhil Advani

When the interviewer asked if “Aditya dislikes people,” Nikkhil immediately said that this isn’t the case. “Adi doesn’t dislike. He is just suspicious of everybody. I wouldn’t say he dislikes. He loves his group of people that he is really close to. He is really, really close to those people, but he is very suspicious of everybody else because he just feels that I don’t need them. He likes to stay in the Yash Raj space which is good for me, because whenever I knock on his door, he opens it.”

ALSO READ | The unbearable weight of massive stardom: Drawing parallels between Pushpa 2 and KGF Chapter 2

Nikkhil implied that it was because of his long-standing relationship with Aditya Chopra that he could convince Rani Mukerji to work on his production Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway. “When I called Rani and I said that I want you to do Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway, she said ‘I have worked only in Yash Raj for nine years so you have to understand that I am used to being Mrs Yash Raj’. I said ‘Rani, I have learnt everything from them’,” he recalled.

Nikkhil said that the culture of treating people with sincerity and showing them some extra care is obsolete nowadays, but back in the day, production houses like YRF and Dharma would be extra cautious about it. He recalled that someone as senior as Yash Chopra would also make the effort of going to the airport to pick up a star like Shah Rukh Khan, but he would also make sure that he picked up the spot boys as well. “Yash ji would go to the airport to pick up Shah Rukh Khan, and the spot boys too,” he said and added, “Industry has forgotten that culture. That’s my big takeaway.”