Shabana Azmi recalls chaotic shoot with Rajesh Khanna, says Kader Khan would send ‘garam garam’ script pages from Chembur

She said, “Earlier, it used to be completely another world altogether. When I started working late in the ’80s, my God, it was amazing how disciplined they are. How every single person on the set knows exactly what they are doing. The script is given to everybody. We’ve had situations where Rajesh Khanna and I are shooting a scene, the first page, not knowing what the second page is, which is being written…”

She continued, “We are shooting in Khar… Kader Khan, who is a writer also, and an actor for another film, is at RK Studios in Chembur, and is also writing this. So, we’ve done the first page, and we’re sitting, and we don’t know what the second page is. And we’re waiting for it to come, fresh, garam garam (hot from the oven). How can you do anything like that? To bring about any degree of credibility is impossible. But I must say that now the distinction isn’t that much, because we’ve become equally disciplined. And I think the one thing we have which is an advantage is our spirit of ‘jugaad’. We can put things together, we don’t collapse if the system collapses. Hollywood, they collapse if something goes wrong in the system. There is nothing they can do to save themselves, whereas we have this ability.”

Recently, Robert Downey Jr recalled a similar story about working on the first Iron Man movie. “Well there’s a scene where he is doing a weapons test and he says, ‘Is it better to be feared or respected? Is it too much to ask for both?,’ and Jon and I were literally writing that line for line as we went along shooting it that day,” Downey told Vanity Fair.

Shabana has worked in several international projects over the years, such as the series Son of the Pink Panther, City of Joy, Madame Sousatzka, Midnight’s Children, The Good Karma Hospital, Halo, and most recently, Shekhar Kapur’s What’s Love Got to Do with It? She can currently be seen in Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.