‘Shah Rukh Khan refused to work with Mahesh Bhatt, panicked Karan Johar called, said my dad will die’: Viveck Vaswani recalls how SRK rescued Dharma

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Recalling the incident, Vaswani said, “Karan Johar called me in the middle of the night and said that ‘My father will die.’ At this point Gumrah, Duniya, and Muqqadar ka Faisla had all flopped. The biggest blow was that Agneepath also bombed. Now they are telling me that Mahesh Bhatt has agreed that he will do the next film for Dharma Productions free of charge. But Shah Rukh had to be there.” Yash Johar’s Dharma started with the impressive hit Dostana (1980), but Ramesh Talwar’s Duniya (1984), Prakash Mehra’s Muqaddar Ka Faisla (1987), Mahesh Bhatt’s Gumrah (1990) and Mukul S Anand’s Agneepath (1990) had all flopped and the Johars were on the verge of losing everything. The production house gained prominence with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), which also marked Karan’s directorial debut. Shah Rukh was an up and coming actor at the time, but was still months away from the massive success of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, which firmly established his as India’s top star.

Vaswani revealed that Shah Rukh did not wish to work with Bhatt sahab, and that some previous attempts to get the actor to do something he did not want to do had proven to be futile and dangerous. “Now I know that Shah Rukh didn’t want to work with Bhatt sahab. There were fights on the phone. There was a man called Vasi Khan, who was Feroz Khan’s associate director. He called me Shah Rukh’s secretary on the phone and said, ‘Tu kaun hai? Shah Rukh se baat nahi karwane wala? (Who are you to keep me from talking to Shah Rukh?)’ Now Shah Rukh accidentally heard this, and he picked up the phone, and he gave him the kind of bad words from Delhi that I had never heard. He told me, ‘If this guy calls again, I will go and beat him up,'” said Vaswani.

The producer continued and said that Shah Rukh tried to explain his position to Mahesh Bhatt and had made up his mind. But upon hearing the unfortunate circumstances that Yash was going through, the actor decided to do the film.

“With great respect for Bhatt sahab, he told him, ‘Your kind of cinema and my kind of cinema don’t match.’ That is why Karan called me, because getting Shah Rukh would mean getting Bhatt Sahab for free. Shah Rukh was shooting at Mehboob Studios, and I went there to ask him. I told him about Yash, and Shah Rukh agreed, but the moment he heard Bhatt sahab’s name, he said no. I told him the situation, and that is how the film Duplicate was born. Bhatt sahab was hardly on the set for the film, and it was Karan and Shah Rukh who made the film,” said Vaswani.

In an earlier interview with Komal Nahta, Karan had described the family’s financial situation at the time, adding that Agneepath’s failure had broken his father. “These were big films with major directors and actors. But when Agneepath flopped, my father was truly heartbroken. He believed it would be the film that elevated him to the level he aspired to.”