courtesy: the statesman
Farhan Akhtar recently spilled the beans on the casting of his directorial debut and the amount of grace shown by Akshaye Khanna during the production of Dil Chahta Hai. In a candid chat with Faye D’Souza on her YouTube channel, Farhan shared that he had first called up Akshaye for the role of Akash Malhotra, which eventually went to Aamir Khan.
However, by that time when Aamir entered the film, he was keen on playing Akash instead of the sensitive character Sid. Considering Aamir’s demand, Akshaye gave up his preference and opted to play Sid, purely for the sake of the film.
“I have experienced true grace from Akshaye Khanna. When I met him for Dil Chahta Hai, I had offered him the role of Akash, which Aamir ended up doing.” He elaborated, “When I approached Akshaye at that point, I wanted to cast two other younger actors so I went to Hrithik Roshan and Abhishek Bachchan, who were just one film old at that time,. But they had other plans, and that didn’t happen, so I had to go for the slightly older generation of actors for Dil Chahta Hai. After dar dar ki thokrein khake, I showed the script to Aamir. He told me that since he had done a couple of serious roles, he wanted to play the role of Akash.”
Farhan was nervous while telling Akshaye how Aamir had offered to play the part of Akash. But Farhan need not have been anxious as Akshaye’s response was unlike what he had anticipated. He shared that Akshaye calmly told him that he loved the film and knows that it had to be made. Farhan added that it is rare to come across actors who let go of roles so gracefully.
