EXCLUSIVE! Rajkumar Hirani on working with Shah Rukh Khan in Dunki | Not Just Bollywood

It is always a joy to catch up with Rajkumar Hirani for an interview. A director who is known for not following any particular trend talks about his journey of making Dunki and on illegal immigrants, the research that went behind it and more. Edited excerpts from the interview: You have never made a love story and this is your first attempt to make a love story, how do you think of making this story? With SRK being there as the lead, I don’t think you can avoid it. It just happened. Initially it was all about making a film on people wanting to go there. But as it started evolving somewhere down the line it became a love story because we had to show that span of 25 years and what happens to people when they get separated. So, it just became a love story, but that was not the intention. Was Shah Rukh Khan your first choice as lead? Yes. Actually, we have been wanting to work together for a long, but it didn’t materialise. But this time what happened during the COVID times, he asked me what I was working on. I told him my ideas and he got fascinated with the story of _Dunki_. He was completely part of the journey from the beginning. Shah Rukh Khan shares a lot of love and it’s a joy to meet him and just chat with him. The role of Vicky Kaushal in Dunki was really touching, was it there in the very beginning? This character was there, but I never thought of Vicky doing this because, if you look at the other two characters, Balli and Buggu played by Anil Grover and Vikram Kochhar were equally important. Similarly, Vicky was an important character, but a shorter role than these guys. It became impactful because Vicky did it. But actually, I never thought of even asking him, because Vicky now is a big star doing lead roles. I thought it wouldn’t be fair to offer him this role. I just very casually happened to mention it to his father who was doing action for this film. Apparently, the same night he went and told him. Then I got a call from Vicky and that’s how he was in my film, Dunki. SRK had mentioned that he was nervous playing the role of a guy who doesn’t know English. How did you convince him? When we initially met for the readings, we realised that Taapsee Pannu was just fit for the role. The other two actors were also Punjabi-speaking actors. So, SRK felt that all of them were speaking in fluent Hindi and it was a challenge for him to make the world believe that he can’t speak English. It was a task, but that excited him too. But I have never seen anybody work so hard, the way Shah Rukh did. He would rehearse the scenes and send me much in advance. He has always played the urban guy, but I had complete joy working with him. His presence makes the set happy. If you look at Jawan or Pathaan, it is a very SRK-centric film. I find him such a sport that he accepted a role where there are so many characters.

You never follow any particular trend when doing a movie, so why this time a movie on illegal immigrants? What was it that was playing in your mind when you started working on the story and the research that went behind it? All the films that I have done before, the attempt has been to find a unique story that has not been seen before. But as you say if you follow trends, you end up making a film that has worked before and give it a different packaging. So, that’s one way of looking at things that this is what the world wants and let me look at it differently and see if it works. I always attempt to find at least one unique story and something that personally touches me. India is full of stories and I found this to be a very unique story that right in front of our eyes, there is a state where people put aeroplanes on top of the terraces to say that my kid is in Canada or the UK. Once you start exploring, you go to Punjab and you see streets full of VISA agents and English-speaking classes hoardings. So, when I started exploring and started seeing these videos, I realised that there are thousands of people doing Dunkies. I found this to be an interesting space to explore and a human story that needed to be explored. There was a humungous research that went behind Dunki. How did you go about the entire process? Actually, the first time I got exposed to this concept was PK. I was supposed to shoot in Italy and I was in a very small town called Verona there. There I saw a fellow standing like the Statue of Liberty and I remember I was there for four hours there. My eyes kept on going to him that how do these people become like these statues and stand there completely still for so many hours to earn a little bit of money. When the guy took off his mask, what I saw was a Punjabi guy standing behind the mask. I went to talk to him. But he didn’t reply. He turned away and walked very fast and vanished. I was told that he is an illegal immigrant and there were tons of these illegal immigrants in Verona. This I found it to be very fascinating that why in a small town like Italy you will find a Punjabi guy. That happened and I forgot about it, then I saw this image of Punjab and then I figured out that all Punjabis had this dream of settling in foreign countries. Initially the research was on google and then I decided to go there once and see how things are. So, I went to Punjab and found out that there is a whole street of visa agents and English-speaking classes. I also went and attended a couple of those classes by wearing a mask. It was funny also to see how English was taught and sad also to see how these middle-aged people were also learning English to get a student VISA. Student VISA is a route and they tie up with a strange unknown university which is also fake who will send them admission letters. This is one route and the other is going to the UK illegally. All these kinds of stories drove me to do this film. Bollywood has given so many theatrical hits this year. What do you have to say? What is exciting is that people are going to the cinema halls and the only thing I can see is that people have been exposed to cinema a lot because of OTT. So, there is an emerging audience which is liking different kinds of films. Now the challenges will be there where a certain kind of cinema will work in cinema halls and a certain type will work on OTT. But we are definitely in a good phase now.