Filmmaker Mansoor Khan, who worked with his cousin Aamir Khan on the hit films Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, reflected on putting together the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Josh. He said that he was about to commit ‘sacrilege’ by casting Kajol as his character’s sister in the film, after they’d been established as their generation’s biggest romantic pair already. He also spoke about eventually casting Aishwarya Rai in the film, and described her as a thorough professional.
Appearing on the India Now and How YouTube channel, he spoke about why he decided to pair Shah Rukh and Aishwarya as siblings on screen, as opposed to a romantic couple. He said that he doesn’t ‘give a damn’ what people think about his choices. He said, “My thought was, both characters are equally important… I always had Shah Rukh in my mind for Max’s role. And I was intending to cast Aamir in Chandrachur Singh’s role. When I told Aamir the story, he assumed that he was playing Max. Then, when I told Shah Rukh, he was very excited. When I asked him, ‘Shah Rukh, are you doing the film or not?’ He said he’s not doing it. ‘Because I know you’re taking Aamir in it’.”
The confusion didn’t end there, because Mansoor had the idea of casting Kajol in the film as well. “The punchline is that I narrated the film to Kajol because I wanted her to play the sister. This is the ultimate sacrilege, after Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. After she heard the story idea, she got up and was ready to leave my house. I said, ‘Kajol, are you doing the film?’ She said, ‘No, I want to play Max’. Then she walked out.”
Mansoor decided to cast Aishwarya after she established herself as a beauty queen. “I was worried that nobody wanted to play Max’s sister, but luckily, Aishwarya agreed to do the film. “She was a thorough professional. She never complained, never said where the camera should be… I think, personally, Josh was her best film.”
Josh emerged as a modest box office hit, but in 2003, Mansoor quit the film industry and left to settle as a farmer in Coonoor. He returned briefly to work on Imran Khan’s debut film Jaane Tu Yaa Jaana Na, and more recently, to work on Junaid Khan’s second film.
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