Farah Khan yelled, ‘She’s the only one doing it right’: Karan Johar recalls the moment he knew Rani Mukerji was going to be a star

Karan continued, “Ironically, Aditya Chopra calls me and says, ‘Have you seen this film Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat? There’s a girl called Rani Mukerji, and you should meet her. I went to her place, narrated the film, and she also said she’ll take a day (to decide). She called me and asked, ‘How will you convince an audience that Shah Rukh loves me over Kajol?’ Because Shah Rukh and Kajol had just done Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t have a choice. But the first day of filming, I knew that a star was born, and I’ll tell you what happened.”

Narrating the story of when he realised that Rani was going to be a star, he said, “We were shooting the song Koi Mil Gaya, it was Shah Rukh, Kajol and Rani. Farah Khan was the director of choreography. Rani was the only one who’d rehearsed the song. We are shooting, and the first thing we did was the hook step. We were doing a wide shot. Shot got over and Kajol and Shah Rukh looked at Rani, and Kajol said, ‘You’re doing something wrong’. From the mic, Farah said, ‘She’s the only one doing it right, y’all are all doing rubbish’. And in that moment, a star and her confidence was born.”

Karan had a similarly difficult time finding someone to do the role that eventually went to Salman Khan. He said that Salman eventually agreed. On set, Salman wanted to shoot a song sequence in a T-shirt and ripped jeans, which Karan was against. Salman relented only when Karan started crying. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was a major hit, and is considered a landmark film of the 1990s.

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