Kareena glad she quit ‘Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai’

Kareena Kapoor is now more restrained when she speaks in public. However there was a time when she, didn’t hold back in interviews. In a memorable chat with Filmfare in 2000, Kareena spoke about everything from her beef with director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, her desire to distance herself from the kind of films her sister Karisma was known for, her distaste for Salman Khan’s acting, and dropping out of ‘Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai’.

Kareena was supposed to star opposite Hrithik Roshan in the film ‘Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai’. After shooting for it briefly, her mother Babita decided to pull her out of the project, and she was replaced by Ameesha Patel.

Speaking with Filmfare, Kareena said that she would have definitely become a star if she hadn’t left the project, but she wanted to be known as an ‘actress’ instead. She elaborated, “The film was made for Hrithik. His dad spent five hours on every frame and close-up of his, whereas not even five seconds were spent on Ameesha. There are portions in the film where she has pimples and under-eye bags on her face. She just doesn’t look beautiful, but every shot of his was a dream. If I were in the film, I would have definitely got a better deal, but I still feel that the attention would have divided between us. So, I’m glad I didn’t do the film. I’m glad that even after I left the movie there is no problem between Hrithik and me. He’s still a friend, I’m very happy for his success and we are even working in two films together.”

In the same interview, Kareena also said that she wouldn’t want to work with directors like David Dhawan at the start of her career, even though his collaborations with Karisma made her a star.

Giving more insight into what happened on the sets of Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai, director Rakesh Roshan told The Quint in 2020, “Kareena’s mother Babita, who I have a lot of respect for, said, ‘Don’t begin with a song, she’s not ready. Start with dialogues’,” he said, adding, “Babita was a little adamant about it. So I said, ‘This way I cannot work because tomorrow you might say, don’t do this, don’t do that. I think it’s better we part ways because we are good friends.’ So we parted ways.”