Deepak Tijori recalls Mahesh Bhatt telling him and Rahul Roy to decide among themselves who’ll play lead in Aashiqui

Deepak said that his character was based on the director’s own friend, while Rahul Roy’s character was based on Mahesh Bhatt himself. He said, “When I found out they wanted me for the friend’s role, all of us showed up on the sets of Bhatt saab’s film Daddy. At that time, it was common for strugglers to show up on the set of films and hang around with directors we knew we’d be working with. We weren’t assistant directors or into production, so we would just hang around. One time, we’d gone to the set and Rahul was there, Raj Zutshi was there, and there was John Gardner, who is now Akshay Anand. We all knew each other. We were all sitting together, and Aashiqui was being planned at the time. Bhatt saab comes, and says, ‘Listen, you decide among yourselves who’ll play the lead and who’ll play the friend, I’m going to work’. I knew I was doing the friend’s role already, so I backed out…”

Speaking about his remuneration for the film, he laughed that there’s no negotiating with producer Mukesh Bhatt. “I was paid Rs 20,000,” he said, adding, “It was the flat fee for all of us, including me and Rahul. There was no scope of negotiation, what we got was more than enough. Mukesh ji has always been like that.”

Aashiqui became a blockbuster in 1990, and made Rahul Roy and Anu Aggarwal overnight stars. A spiritual sequel, starring Aditya Roy Kapur and Shraddha Kapoor, was released to major commercial success in 2013.