Sonali Kulkarni recalls her ‘Luck By Chance’ casting in Dil Chahta Hai after Zoya Akhtar found her photos on the floor: ‘Who is she?’

In Luck By Chance, Farhan Akhtar portrays a struggling actor who suddenly shoots to fame after his photographs luckily land in the hands of a big filmmaker, who is in search of a fresh face for his next big-budget film. A similar situation unfolded in real life for actor Sonali Kulkarni, who was cast in Farhan’s directorial debut Dil Chahta Hai.

In a recent interaction with Siddharth Kannan, Sonali shared how she landed her role opposite Saif Ali Khan in Dil Chahta Hai after the film’s casting director—and Farhan’s sister—Zoya Akhtar discovered her photographs on the floor. She recounted, “Someone had my photos, and they fell on the ground. Zoya happened to be there and saw my photos. She picked them up and asked, ‘Who is this?’ They told her it was me, but Zoya didn’t believe it. She said, ‘I’ve seen Sonali Kulkarni’s films. She doesn’t look like this.’ Then Zoya called me to meet her at Excel office because she had never seen me in casual clothes. We had such a lovely time rehearsing one scene, laughing throughout the rehearsal.”

In Dil Chahta Hai, Sonali Kulkarni is associated with the film’s iconic romantic track, “Woh Ladki Hai Kahan”. Reflecting on the song, she also shared that they barely rehearsed it, saying, “My song became a cult hit, and people still remember it. We only rehearsed for about 5 minutes. Farah Khan was the choreographer, and I told her assistant I only had three hours to practice for the song because I had a theatre show scheduled. The rehearsal was done in 5-10 minutes. They taught me the hook step and asked me to leave.”

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Sonali Kulkarni also described a funny moment on set that had Saif Ali Khan in splits, particularly due to one of her looks in the song. “That song was an ode to every decade of Hindi cinema. For one part of the song, I wore a skin-tight salwar kameez with my hair styled in a bouffant. Saif started laughing when he saw me because he’d seen his mother, Sharmila Tagore, in the same look.”