Director Rahul Dholakia opens up about his upcoming film
Subhash K Jha (DNA; February 21, 2015)

Raees will take Shah Rukh Khan in a world as far removed from Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge as Punjab is from London. Rahul says it wasn’t at all difficult to convince SRK at all. “I had narrated the script to him with my producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar present. I think SRK got interested because mid-point, he said he’s doing the film. I felt like a schoolboy who’s been told he has passed.”

The second-half of the script had to be reworked a bit. “Not much. But changes had to be made, because it was the unusualness of the script that appealed to Shah Rukh.”

What blew Rahul’s mind was SRK’s memory. “I went back to him with the second half of the script after almost a year. He remembered details from the first narration that even I had forgotten. This kind of dedication coming from a superstar of his stature left me deeply impressed.”

Rahul, who begins shooting Raees in February-end, is now working on the actor’s look and accent. “He plays a man from the ghetto in Gujarat. He dresses and speaks in a particular manner.”

Buzz is that Shah Rukh plays a real-life character in Raees. Says Rahul, “His character started off as a real-life person. But as we wrote and re-wrote several drafts of the script, his character become more and more fictional.”

The idea for the film started with the issue of prohibition. “We wanted to make a film on the issue. And since Gujarat is the only state that has prohibition, we decided to set the story there.” The last film Rahul shot there — Parzania — had a bitter aftermath. But that’s not the reason he is staying away from the state. He explains, “It’s practical to not take Shah Rukh into the crowds. He is a star with a mammoth following. To shoot with him on the streets in Ahmedabad is not only impractical, it’s suicidal. I remember when we were shooting with Sanjay Dutt in Kashmir for Lamhaa. Huge crowds would gather and obstruct shooting.”

Rahul says he didn’t want a repeat of that situation. The film will be shot on a sprawling set in Mumbai standing in for the slums of Ahmedabad.