Irrfan Khan, who passed away in 2020 after a long battle with cancer, was one of the most prolific actors that Indian cinema had ever seen. Irrfan had appeared in some of the most acclaimed films of the 21st century, but he also appeared in some of the most mainstream Hindi films and managed to bring both these worlds together. In a recent interview, Tanuja Chandra, who directed him in Qarib Qarib Singlle, recalled that he wasn’t very easy to work with, but reminisced those days as a "beautiful" experience. The 2017 film also starred Parvathy. On The Pooja Bhatt Show, Tanuja recalled that Irrfan took one year to say yes to the film, after Tanuja approached him, and was in regular contact with his wife Sutapa Sikdar. In fact, when Tanuja actually said that perhaps they should collaborate on another project, and Sutapa suggested Farhan Akhtar’s name for the film, Irrfan jumped in saying, “Farhan ke sath banaoge (You will make it with Farhan)?,” Tanuja recalled. She shared that Sutapa would talk about Irrfan saying the dialogues out loud at 3 am while walking around his house when he was preparing for the film. Tanuja then spoke about working with Irrfan across multiple locations throughout the country and said, “Working with Irrfan was beautiful. Difficult, he was not easy. He didn’t like to do too many takes because he thought that the spontaneity would go away,” she recalled. Tanuja also shared that her sound engineer would request Irrfan to speak loudly but Irrfan would just not oblige. “At the time of dubbing, I remember, my poor sound designer would say, 'Irrfan ji, thoda loud boliye na (please speak loudly)'. He would say, 'Kyu? Tumko sunayi nahi de raha kya? (Why? Can’t you hear me?)'.” ALSO READ | Saif Ali Khan says ex-wife Amrita Singh played a big role in his life: ‘We usually speak whenever I’m in a hospital bed’ Tanuja shared that since a lot of Irrfan’s dialogues were spoken under the breath, he could manage to change them at the time of dubbing. “The great thing was that because of his mumbling, he used to change the entire dialogue in dubbing and you couldn't make out the difference because his mouth is doing whatever it is doing, it’s doing its own unique dance,” she said, calling him a “great actor,” who had an “inexplicable magic” in his performance. Irrfan's last film was the 2020 release Angrezi Medium.
