Not Dimple, but Kumud Mishra was first choice for ‘Pathaan’ JOCR head

Mumbai, Feb 7  Director Siddharth Anand, who is basking in the success of his recent Shah Rukh Khan-starrer ‘Pathaan’, recently shared that actress Dimple Kapadia was initially not a part of the film and her role was written for Kumud Mishra.

But, watching Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ compelled Sid to cast Dimple for the role and change the gender of the character.

The director said: “That role wasn’t actually written for Dimple Kapadia – it was written for Kumud Mishra. But a night before I was going to speak to Kumud Mishra I happened to watch ‘Tenet’. Dimple was so fantastic in the film. So we changed the gender of the character because I felt she would add a sense of warmth to Shah Rukh because his equation with women is just fantastic. I’m so glad it worked out and she was able to take on the role.”

He also shared that it was the first time that he designed the scenes to evoke whistles from the audience. He also opened up on the iconic post credit scene which sees Salman Khan and SRK having a meta-moment.

He told Film Companion: “‘Pathaan’ was the first film I designed for the seetis (whistles) and the claps. My earlier films are a lot more subtle, for instance you will not remember any dialogues from War for instance. But here everything came together to make it a front-footed, commercial mass entertainer. When Shah Rukh comes out of the shadows and says ‘zinda hai’ we were clapping on the set itself.”

When asked about the post-credit scene with the two Khans, the filmmaker had this to say: “That prophecy turned out true – they said ‘hume hi karna padega’ and they only did it! We knew that we wanted Salman Khan’s Tiger to come into the film so we could make the crossover. Logically if a director knew this was happening in his film he would stage it in the climax at the end of the film. But I was dead sure I didn’t want that. I knew I wanted the hero to get his own space at the end of the film and to feel he has done it himself.”