With nine Filmfare awards to its credit Kaho Na…Pyar Hai became the second- largest Filmfare award winner after Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge which had won ten Filmfare trophies. Rakesh Roshan felt vindicated. While his earlier films won awards none had gone to him in the capacity of a director.
Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai Turns 25: Rakesh Roshan on double roles, family awards, and underworld threats
Recalls Rakesh Roshan, “When a film is rewarded and awarded it definitely gives one a huge high. Sometimes a film does exceptionally well at the box office. But it doesn’t win any awards. Then again, there are award-winning films which aren’t successful at the box office. Kaho Na…Pyar Hai did both. It became a hit and got awards. But to be honest, I didn’t expect so many awards. I think for three members of the same family (Rakesh Roshan, his brother Rajesh Roshan and son Hrithik) to win awards for the same film is unprecedented.
While other films featuring protagonists in a double role had been consistently flopping, two Hrithiks in Kaho Na…Pyar Hai seemed to please audiences immensely.
Rakesh Roshan explains why. “This was a double role with a difference. The two Hrithiks were never together. When one dies the other appears. So, in a way the two characters formed a complete whole. In most films featuring double roles one is a good and the other a bad guy. In this case both the Hrithiks were shown as decent human beings with different attitudes to life. We planned the film in the way it was presented with the girl Ameesha Patel gradually coming to love the person whom her dead boyfriend resembles although she insists, she can never forget her first love. It’s the crisis in the girl’s life that brings her close to her dead love’s lookalike.”
The filmmaker remembers the moment he decided to cast his son Hrithik in Kaho Na…Pyar Hai. “On the morning when I decided on this story Hrithik was sitting next to me. Since the story required a new face we decided then and there that Hrithik would do it. Contrary to rumours, Shah Rukh Khan was never considered for Kaho Na…Pyar Hai. He was in the running for another film that I was planning to make at that time. If I had made that film Hrithik would have made his debut a couple of years down the line. It was fate, I guess.”
Soon after Kaho Na…Pyar Hai was declared a blockbuster Rakesh Roshan was shot at by the underworld which claimed he had promised that Hrithik would do a film for them. “I never gave any indication that Hrithik could do a film for them. I kept putting them off saying Hrithik had no dates, which in any case, was the truth. They then asked me to take dates away from other producers and give it to them. This again, I refused to do. Once I had committed my son’s dates elsewhere, I refused to give into arm twisting tactics. I never gave in. With the kind of tension and fear that some of us had to bear, we couldn’t do anything creative, let alone make a film.”
Also Read: 25 Years of Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai: Hrithik Roshan shares 27-year-old handwritten notes for prep of his role; says, “ONLY thing I want to celebrate are these scribbles in my rough book”
More Pages: Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai Box Office Collection
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