Rajkumar Hirani recalls Sham Kaushal’s hilarious suggestion to include stunts in his movies; SRK says Dunki director got his revenge

Recalling that Sham Kaushal has been working with him as an action coordinator since 3 Idiots, Rajkumar Hirani humorously remarked about the scarcity of action sequences in his past films, stating, “you know how many action sequences were there in my previous films,” emphasising their near absence, which led Shah Rukh Khan to wonder, “why did you even have an action director in your movies?”

“Sham used to express dissatisfaction with being assigned only minor tasks in my films, such as ensuring actors’ safety during slapping scenes. He thus began urging me to involve him in the scripting process. When I reminded him that my scripts don’t usually require action sequences, he would say it doesn’t matter, as his plan was to introduce four goons as soon as the hero left his house to get into the car,” Hirani said.

“So, this is the first time where he is choreographing proper action scenes in my movies,” the filmmaker mentioned, prompting SRK to quickly inject his signature wit and point out that, “to retaliate against Sham’s persistent requests, Hirani featured the latter’s son Vicky in a scenario where he was beaten up on-screen by his own father’s stuntmen,” sparking laughter from Hirani and Taapsee. “But Sham becomes quite concerned whenever filming action sequences with Vicky Kaushal,” Hirani added.

Sham Kaushal was the stunt coordinator in Hirani’s PK (2014) and Sanju (2018) as well. Dunki marks Rajkumar Hirani’s return to Bollywood as a director after over five years since Sanju, starring Ranbir Kapoor in the lead role.