When Sridevi performed a comedy scene days after her father’s death, Yash Chopra called it the ‘secret to her success’

Sridevi learnt about her father’s death the next day as she reached Chennai and after 3-4 days, she called Yash. “She told me I can’t come for 16 days because of some ceremonies. After that, I’ll come.” Before the Chandni actor left, Chopra had told Sridevi that he would wait for her no matter how many days it took for her to come back because he could not shoot for the remaining portion anywhere else in the world.

Yash recalled that as Sridevi returned after 16 days, he asked her if she was mentally and physically ready to work. He asked, “Sri, do you think you are in a proper mood, physically and mentally both, to shoot tomorrow? She said, ‘I am shooting, no problem. I have come for shooting only’.”

Yash said that they had to shoot for a comedy scene the next day because Sridevi’s co-star Waheeda Rehman had been waiting for 16 days to shoot. “The next morning when she got up, I told her, ‘Sri, there is a problem that I have got two scenes only with Waheeda ji and she has been waiting for 16 days to do this. This scene is a comedy scene’. She said, ‘no problem, acting is acting’. You must remember that scene where she has the mud pack on. It was more about the artist performing in that scene. She contributed a lot of things in that,” he remembered.

“At that time, I thought she is so professional. Such a wonderful artist. At that moment, she forgot everything. She did a wonderful scene. I understood then that is reason, the secret for her success,” Yash recalled.

Sridevi passed away in 2018 at the age of 55.