'Vinod Khanna decided to get drunk before doing a scene on the sets of 99,' reveal director duo Raj and DK: 'He had a glass in hand, he had already made up his mind'

Vinod Khanna has been in the news lately because his son Akshaye Khanna is the talk of the town. This took fans back to Akshaye's early life, thus also recalling memories of his superstar father who left the industry and chose spirituality at the peak of his career. In a recent interview, director duo Raj and DK have opened up on their experience of working with Khanna. The later actor played a role in their film '99' which continues to be remembered till date. It was around the same time when Dharmendra did Sriram Raghavan's 'Johnny Gaddaar'.

Looking back, Raj recalled the nerves that came with directing a legend. He said during a chat with Screen, “We just got two days with him to shoot, as he was in the middle of a lot of things. So I remember the first day, everybody was waiting, we were all scared. ‘Oh God, how do we direct?’ The fact that the word itself, you know, you have to go direct Vinod Khanna, doesn’t sound easy. So we were waiting for Vinod ji. Then he called us inside. We went in and told him the scene. And I think he was tipsy.”




Krishna DK clarified the sequence of events that followed on set. “So, no, there were three scenes, and we were shooting them in sequence. So he played the first scene sober and we got done. And after the second scene, he called us to his van and said, ‘Listen, I’m going to play it tipsy. I’m going to be a little drunk.’ And we were like, ‘Oh sure, if that’s what you want to do. It doesn’t have to be.’ He said, ‘No, no, it’ll be good. I’ll play it drunk.’ But the thing is, he already had a glass in his hand. And when we came out, we decided that he had probably already made up his mind that he was going to have a few drinks. So we were like, let’s just take what we get, because we don’t know what will happen.’”

Raj went on to admit that the decision initially made them uneasy, especially considering how drunken characters are often exaggerated in Hindi films. “We were very nervous because usually when actors get drunk, they do the same sort of typical acting that we have seen far too many times in Hindi movies. But Vinod ji played it really well, and that decision of him being a bit high also added some gravitas to the scene.”

Although Vinod Khanna was selective with his work in the latter part of his career, ‘99’ has since earned cult status among comedy lovers. More recently, his second wife, Kavita Khanna, reflected on a deeply transformative chapter of his life in a conversation with Loveena Tandon. Speaking about what drew him towards spirituality and Osho, she said, “I think he started listening to Osho’s discourses as they went through a terrible period in their lives, with five deaths in the family, including people who were particularly close to him, like his mother. When his mother died, he went to the ashram and took sanyas. That’s how that journey began.”

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