‘Shah Rukh Khan was kind, Kajol didn’t take to me, Saroj Khan said I was shaking my shoulders like Sunny Deol’: Mandira Bedi remembers working on DDLJ

Mandira, who played the meek Preeti Singh in the film, said that she was not able to shake her hips like Saroj wanted her to, and she was told that she’s dancing like Sunny Deol. She said, “Saroj Khan, an absolute legend, and she’s telling me, ‘You are shaking your shoulders like Sunny Deol. You need to shake your hips, women shake hips’. I couldn’t shake (my) hips for love or for money. I can’t do this.”

“To start off, the song was very hard. It would be nice had we done a few scenes and I would have eased into it. But the first thing we did was to shoot the song, it was in Filmistan and that orange and purple thing that I wore, I had never worn something like that before or since. It was an interesting outfit, and I enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoyed it eventually, by the end I was sort of getting the hang of shaking my hips but I wish I had started with a scene,” she added.

Mandira then shared how Shah Rukh Khan made her feel comfortable and was “accommodating” when she needed to do multiple takes for the song, but Kajol did not “take to” her.

She said, “It was lovely shooting with Shah Rukh Khan, because he just made me feel so comfortable. He is such a natural, he is so kind. Even with my retakes with the song he was very accommodating and very nice. Kajol also, she didn’t take to me the first few days, but eventually she did, and we all got along really well. It was just a really nice experience, all told, in my 22 days. I look back at it with a lot of gratitude, it’s definitely one for the books.”