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Raees director Rahul Dholakia graced the first episode of Talk Shop, a show which aims to introduce directors, the star-makers to the masses. The filmmaker went candid about why he has not worked with Akshay Kumar yet despite being a good friend of his wife Twinkle Khanna, why he makes controversial films, the issue of intolerance in India and more.
His parents taught him something which he believes till date, “If you believe in something, go for it and don’t worry about the consequences.”
Most of his films have created controversies. How does he explain it? Rahul says, “I think it’s in my DNA. My father was part of the student movement in India.”
Talking about the risks his profession entails, the filmmaker revealed about receiving a lot of threat calls while researching for his movie Lamhaa in Kashmir. He has even interviewed a militant on parole after 16 years! Rahul said, “The militant, who had a record of killing around 200 people, was sitting for the interview with an AK 47 next to him. For 2 hours he kept on bit**ing about India and expressed how much he hated the country. When he asked me, when are you going back to India, I told him, this (Srinagar) may not be India for you but it is India for me even today.”
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He plans a vacation just 6 days in advance and rejects a film if he is not satisfied with its draft. The director revealed about rejecting a film once after making 60-70 drafts and said, “I don’t regret it as I always enjoy the process.”
Regarding working with actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Sanjay Dutt and Shah Rukh Khan in his films Parzania, Lamhaa and Raees he feels, “I have been very fortunate. I think I have got the best actors. God has been kind and they (actors) have been kind to do these films.”
Given a choice to remake Deewar, the director said that he would want to cast Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan. He also voted for SRK as the most hardworking actor.
Regarding the casting of Raees, he said, “Ritesh (Sidhwani) and Farhan (Akhtar) had asked me to name 5 actors for the role and I named just one!”
Talking about the issue of intolerance in India, Rahul Dholakia said, “In today’s time, everybody reacts to everything over the top and then they forget about it also. Where is the conviction? Where is the passion? We want to voice our opinion on everything and social media is the easiest way to do it.”
Watch the full interview here:
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