When Saif Ali Khan revealed he was ousted from debut film for not leaving girlfriend, was labelled ‘drunk’: ‘Was quite affected’

“Struggle ka matlab kya hota hai? Auto rickshaw mein baitho aur 10 chakkar kaato. Kisi ke office mein 3 ghante ke liye baitho. Ise struggle kehte hain. Meri struggle bhi thi lekin alag thi. Mujhe apni pehle film se nikaal diya gaya kyuki mere director saab ne bola ki you leave your girlfriend or you do the film. It was a moral choice (What does struggle even mean? Sit in an auto rickshaw and go to the same place 10 times. Sit in an office and wait for 3 hours. That’s what they call struggle. My struggle was a bit different. I was fired from my first film because my director asked me to either leave my girlfriend or continue on the film).”

When asked how he has done things differently than others, Saif responded, “I haven’t studied much after school, maybe I will do that later. I think it is important. When I pay less attention to details that other people look at, like ‘what does your father do?’ People say that I am too open, even to strangers.”

During the filming of Bekhudi, Saif was also accused of arriving drunk on set. In another interview with Lehren at the time, Saif had said that because of these accusations, no one wanted to work with him afterward. “I feel he (Rahul) thinks that I am not interested in films, that I don’t want to work. Several rumours also started going around on, that I came to the sets drunk, that I kept sleeping on the sets. All this is old now but I was quite affected,” he said.

Rahul Rawail eventually replaced Saif with Kamal Sadanah in his film, which also starred Kajol in lead role.