Karan Johar recalls having a big fight with Aditya Chopra over Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji’s intimate scenes in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna – Times of India

Karan Johar recently recalled having a big fight with Aditya Chopra over the portrayal of Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji’s sex scene in his 2006 directorial Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. In the film, SRK and Rani’s married characters are shown cheating on their respective spouses and committing adultery. Karan said that Aditya was concerned whether the Indian audience will accept this or not.
“I was shooting that sequence, and I was at this big location that was snowed out, and Adi called me. He said, ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple of days, and it’s very strongly in my head. I don’t think they should have sex. I feel like India will not accept it. They should come to the point, and retract, because they’re guilty about it’,” Karan said on All About Movies podcast.

He continued, “I was like, ‘No, I’m going to do it. How can you be in a relationship and not have sex?’ So, we had this big fight over the phone, and I was rebellious about it. Much later, when I sat down with the film, and I thought about it, and I think back and feel that he was right. Not optically or anything, but commercially. I feel the country would’ve been far more receptive of the love story had they not gone ahead with a physically intimate relationship.”

In 2016, Karan had asked if he could go back in time and make changes to one film, it would be Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. He had said that as a filmmaker he regrets certain things about the flawed film. He also owned up to his mistakes and said that he tried to do something fresh, and interesting, and ground-breaking.