‘I had tussles with Salman on Tiger,’ Kabir Khan recounts how he cast the superstar in Bajrangi Bhaijaan: ‘Salman feels very strongly about secularism’

At Expresso, Kabir Khan shared that after the success of Ek Tha Tiger, there was immense pressure from the industry for him and Salman Khan to work on a sequel.

By: Entertainment Desk

Mumbai | Updated: August 12, 2025 19:52 IST

kabir Khan recounted how he approached Salman Khan with the story of Bajrangi Bhaijaan.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan marked a turning point in Salman Khan’s career, revealing a deeply vulnerable and emotionally resonant side of the actor that audiences had rarely seen on the big screen. The credit for this transformative portrayal goes in large part to filmmaker Kabir Khan, who dared to reimagine Salman in a role that stood in stark contrast to the action-heavy, larger-than-life characters the actor was typically associated with. At the eighth edition of Expresso, an event organised by The Indian Express, Kabir opened up about how he came to cast Salman in Bajrangi Bhaijaan, and how their evolving relationship helped shape the film.

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Speaking candidly during the session, he shared: “In Ek Tha Tiger, I had a lot of tussle with Salman, because at that time, I’d only done two films, and he was the reigning superstar of the industry. But in that tussle, I began to understand him. I spent a lot of time with him and realized that he feels very strongly about certain issues, like the composite culture of India, about secularism… And I told him, ‘But you’ve never articulated this on the platform where you’re practically a demigod. Why is that?’”

Despite the massive success of Ek Tha Tiger, Kabir Khan revealed he was reluctant to follow the industry’s typical formula of chasing sequels. “After creating Ek Tha Tiger, there was immense pressure to make another Tiger. That’s the conventional wisdom in our industry: you make a hit film, you have to make another hit film. Even after New York, people told me to make a sequel. And I had to say, ‘Have you seen the film? I shot everybody dead, how am I supposed to make a sequel?’ I didn’t want to go down that route. I didn’t want to do a Tiger 2. I’d had my fun with action and thought, ‘Okay, that’s enough. I want to move on.’”

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Instead, Kabir Khan approached Salman Khan with a story that was the polar opposite of their previous collaboration, and Salman embraced it wholeheartedly. “So I took this new story to Salman, knowing it was the complete antithesis of what he was at that point, and of what he and I had created with this super-character called Tiger. But he jumped at it, because it really hit home. He said, ‘You know what, we’ll produce this.’ And it became his first production. There was no action. In fact, he’s only being beaten up, and that too by Pakistani policemen, which is completely taboo.”

Kabir also reflected on how Bajrangi Bhaijaan helped him fulfill a long-held vision as a filmmaker transitioning from documentaries to mainstream cinema. “In a sense, it brought together what I had always been trying to do. When I moved from documentaries to mainstream cinema, I knew I wanted to use the format of mainstream cinema, but still have a political base — with the politics in the layers beneath. And I always looked for that balance.”

The eighth edition of Expresso was presented by HSBC in association with Taj Lands End, Mumbai, with Seetu Kohli Homes as the Luxury Partner, Chambers of Kartik Seth as the Knowledge Partner, and Radico as the Celebration Partner.

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