Rajkumar Hirani reveals how Shah Rukh Khan keeps his team happy: ‘They eat and party together’

Like Shah Rukh, Rajkumar is returning to films after a long break. His last film, Sanju, a biopic on actor Sanjay Dutt, was released in 2018. Dunki, also stars Taapsee Pannu and Boman Irani, and has been co-written along with Kanika Dhillon and Abhijat Joshi. The filmmaker stated recently that Dunki is ‘a very high-performance film with a lot of monologues and long scenes’ but Shah Rukh has the whole script memorised in his head. He went on to say that working with the actor was ‘such joy’.

In an interview with India Today, the filmmaker said, “He shoots videos of a scene at his home and sends them to me. There will be 15 ways of how he is going to do this. Before I go on the set, I know what he is going to do. Sometimes I have kept two days for a shoot and he finishes it in two hours. He’s a complete charmer and has great control over the language. He surprised me completely by coming at 7 am to shoot.”

He added, “He is also aware that I sleep early. Pooja [Dadlani] (Shah Rukh’s manager) tells him not to keep me up late. So, he calls me early. He keeps teasing me that by the time the shoot is done, he will have converted me. ‘Subah kaun uthta hai?’ (Who wakes up in the morning?) He keeps his team happy. They eat and party together. They are a big family for him. I wish I had worked earlier with him.”

Shah Rukh’s last film Pathaan was released on January 25. Directed by Siddharth Anand, the action film also stars Deepika Padukone and John Abraham. It has already become a blockbuster and earned over ₹1,000 crore at the box office globally. Dunki will be released in December 2023.