When Mahesh Bhatt axed a scene in Aashiqui because Deepak Tijori ‘overpowered’ Rahul Roy: ‘If you perform better than my hero…’

He said, “When the film was being edited, we used to hang around and watch the process. There was a really emotional scene with me and Rahul. It was almost two minutes long. Bhatt saab initially had it in the first half, but then he moved it to the second half. Then he asked for it to be trimmed. Ultimately, it was cut down to 45 seconds. As actors, we’re greedy for screen time. But what could we say. Then, one day, Bhatt saab asked for the scene to be removed entirely.”

Deepak said that after summoning some courage, he asked the director why he’d decided to remove such an emotional scene from the film. Bhatt told him, “I tried, you saw, didn’t you? But if you perform better than my hero, the scene can’t be in the film. My hero is my hero. People have to love my hero for the film to be a hit.”

Deepak said that the filmmaker’s words became ’embedded’ in his mind, and in each of his subsequent movies, including Khiladi and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, he never performed with the intention of ‘doing better than the other guy’.

Aashiqui, released in 1990, made Rahul Roy and Anu Aggarwal overnight stars. A spiritual sequel, starring Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur, was released in 2013.