Hrithik Roshan recalls dissuading his father from casting Shah Rukh Khan in a film, landing Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai role as a result

He said, “My father told me time and time again, ‘I’m not going to make a film for you, you’re on your own’. So, I was doing screen tests, I did a couple of them, I was looking for work. For my photo session, I had no money. I had promised Daboo Ratnani that I will pay him once I start to earn. All of this was going on, and suddenly, I got this offer. And all I knew was that I had to satisfy my director.”

Hrithik credited his upbringing and innocence as being the reason why the audience accepted him, and made him an overnight sensation. He went from being just a regular guy to a star, ‘in a matter of hours’, he said.

Asked to elaborate on why his father agreed to launch him despite being reluctant about it initially, Hrithik theorised that his father might have not have wanted him to work with others. “When he heard that I was doing screen tests, and was getting offers, maybe he sat down one day and thought, ‘Yeh kya ho raha hai, am I losing out?’

Hrithik continued, “That, and he was making a film at that time with Shah Rukh or Aamir which fell through. And he had another thought, and while he was working on the scripting of that film with all the writers — and I was a part of this process — some weeks into it, everyone started feeling that this film needs a new boy or new girl. You have seen big stars do these roles, and even I was a part of that, that noise. Even I was like, ‘Yes, papa, I don’t want to see Shah Rukh do this’. And, when this got very repetitive, he said, ‘That’s not what I had in mind, I’m taking you in the film’.”

Hrithik is one of Bollywood’s most successful star, but his last film, the action-thriller Vikram Vedha, underperformed at the box office. He theorised in the same interview that it might have been too ‘cerebral’ for his core fanbase. He will next be seen in Fighter.