When Karan Johar ‘wanted to murder’ Anushka Sharma’s career before it even began in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi: ‘After seeing her photo…’

YRF was looking at huge losses and Aditya Chopra realised that a massive hit was needed to break the cycle of flops, and he decided to take matters into his own hands by directing a film himself. In Netflix documentary The Romantics, Aditya spoke about the time he decided to return to the director’s chair after a hiatus of seven years. He said, “In 2007, we started to slip. We had seen a few non-successes and we were looking at a not so good financial position. And I realised I had to direct a film as I haven’t directed for the past seven years. I need to give the company a really big, successful film and I’ll have to do it myself.”

Necessity became the mother of invention, and in this case, the mother of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Aditya shared that he had a ‘germ’ of an idea for the film, and he wrote it in just two weeks during his trip to London. Shah Rukh Khan, who had given YRF their last blockbuster in 2006 with Chak De India, was the first choice for the role of Surinder Sahni, and he readily agreed to do the film.

Shah Rukh Khan in a still from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.

However, Aditya wanted a fresh face to play the female lead, and he selected Anushka Sharma for the role. In the documentary, Anushka revealed that she was only 19 years old when she signed the film, and Aditya wanted her casting to be kept a secret. He even told her not to tell her parents about the film.

Despite Aditya’s confidence in Anushka Sharma, his best friend and filmmaker Karan Johar wasn’t convinced with her looks and he tried to ‘sabotage’ her career before it even began. During the 18th MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in 2016, Karan admitted to advising Aditya against casting Anushka in the film and instead suggested another leading actor.

He said, “I totally wanted to, completely murder Anushka Sharma’s career. Because when Aditya Chopra showed me her image, I was like, ‘no, no, mad or what, you signing her, you crazy! There is no need for you to sign this Anushka Sharma’. There was another lead actress at that time who I wanted Adi to sign and I was totally behind the scene sabotaging her completely. The movie also… I was reluctantly watching Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.”

Adding how Anushka’s performance in Band Baaja Baaraat changed his perception about her, he went on to add, “But when I saw Band Baaja Baaraat, I called her and I felt like I owed her an apology and a compliment. Apology because I felt so embarrassed that I would have actually ruined the graph of an exceptional talent and secondly, a compliment because I thought she was amazing.”

Throwback to when Karan Johar wanted to end Anushka’s career
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Now, with the lead actor and actress on board, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, tasked with reviving YRF, faced another massive problem upon its release. The film was scheduled to be released on December 12, 2007, but tragedy struck the nation when the horrific 26/11 terror attack occurred in Mumbai. Aditya was advised to push the film’s release date, but he refused to budge and he had his reason for the same.

“I thought we will be fine and, more importantly, the people will want to see this film. They would want a life-affirming, feel-good film. I decided to take the risk and didn’t change the date. The decision also came from my innate sense of confidence on the people of this country. Nothing can shake Indians. We’re the most resilient people. And the film did well and we were okay,” he said.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi did more than ‘well.’ Despite not being heavily promoted after the terror attack, it became a blockbuster and raked in Rs 151.6 crore worldwide, according to Sacnilk. It also became the highest-grossing Hindi film of the year overseas, as well as YRF and SRK’s highest-grossing film at the time.