Dharmendra ‘drank a few pegs’ before water tank scene in Sholay, reveals Ramesh Sippy: ‘It was the confession of his real love for Hema Malini’

“He was in the mood. He drank a few pegs. I know that because I could see it in the way he climbed up and down the water tank. It used to scare me too. When I followed him up the water tank, he assured me nothing would happen and that it’s all acting. So, I gave him a free hand. Because it was his confession of love in front of everyone. He was ready to sacrifice his love so even Mausiji relented. Since this was his confession of real love, he put all his might into it,” Ramesh Sippy recalled in an interview with Siddharth Kannan.

Sippy agreed that Dharmendra took the route of “method acting” in that scene because he really wanted to profess his love for Hema Malini. When the two actors finally admitted to their romance after pack-up one evening, the filmmaker was quite glad. “What’s happening in the film, that’s also the reality now. So, it felt nice. I also felt it’s good for the film because the real romance reflects on screen as well,” he added.

Ramesh Sippy, however, couldn’t attest to the rumour that Dharmendra would pay the lightmen Rs 2,000 to delay the canning of shots between him and Hema Malini so that he got more time to spend with her. “I’m not aware of that. Honestly, had I known, how would I have allowed that? He paid Rs 2,000, but I’d be losing Rs 20,000 every day! There weren’t too many retakes. Even if he did it on purpose, it can be possible because there was a flicker already. It must have started erupting. Otherwise they didn’t let anyone get a hint on set. The shooting went on very smoothly,” recalled Sippy.

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Ramesh Sippy was aware of this ‘flicker’ since he worked with both Hema Malini and Dharmendra on his 1973 hit comedy Seeta Aur Geeta. In an exclusive interview with SCREEN earlier this year, Sippy revealed that when Dharmendra expressed his wish to play either Gabbar (eventually played by late Amjad Khan) or Thakur (eventually played by late Sanjeev Kumar), he offered only one lure for him to stick to playing Veeru: “You won’t get Hema Malini otherwise!”