The always wonderful Boman Irani spoke with Subhash K Jha about his 2012 film Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi, which also starred Farah Khan in her acting debut in this exclusive interview.
Boman, thirteen years since you and Farah became the Parsi community’s Dharmendra and Hema Malini?
I can’t believe it’s thirteen years. The film was as much fun to make as it was to watch. We had some lovely good old Parsi friends who kind of joined in and gave it the flavour. A lot of people who had never acted before but I think they put in their act superbly for all of us. And then of course there was our director Bela Sehgal who gave us a lot of space Farah and me to let go and enjoy.
Farah Khan made her belated acting debut?
Initially, Farah was one of the probables. And when I told my wife Zenobia that there’s this film that had come up, she said there’s no question about it, because Zenobia has always been a big fan of Farah, that you should please push for Farah to do this role and she’d be fantastic. And Zenobia and I went and told Bela, Bela what do you think? She said no, I thought maybe you wanted a more experienced actor. I said no, Farah would be fine.
Farah was the right fit?
Farah’s got the madness, Farah’s got the sense of humour. Even though she was at the top of her game as a choreographer, she knew that it was her first film as an actress and was such a willing learner and she would do the takes over and over again and come up with the right tone and pitch. I enjoyed working with Farah more than anything. She’s a sport, she can laugh at herself, she’s hilarious, she’s a good learner and she has a great sense of cinema, great sense of movies and her knowledge of all the great musicals of the past and all our favourite movies kind of match.
You became buddies during the shooting of Shirin Aur Farah?
We were friends even before that, since Main Hoon Na and today we continue to remain as very, very close friends. Zenobia’s an even bigger fan now and we’re extremely close and grateful that we had the opportunity at the right time to do Shirin Farhad, a real romp, a real nice Parsi, light-hearted rom-com, you might call it. It was a rom-com, it definitely was and I have some very vivid, happy memories of the days we were shooting. Well, thank you for asking Subhash, very sweet of you.
