Sara Ali Khan impressed one and all with her performances in her first two films, Kedarnath (2018) and Simmba (2018). Her third film, Love Aaj Kal (2020), was heavily slammed and her performance, especially, was massively trolled. During an interaction with Mayank Shekhar of Mid-Day, Sara Ali Khan honestly talked about this aspect.
Sara Ali Khan admits that there were moments in her Love Aaj Kal performance that were dishonest; confesses that she asked Aanand L Rai ‘Are you sure you don’t want to call Alia Bhatt to do my role in Atrangi Re?’
When Mayank Shekhar straight away asked, “What was Love Aaj Kal?”, Sara flashed her lovely smile and answered, “A mistake on my part!”
She added, “I take full responsibility for the fact that I didn’t deliver. Nevertheless, it really helped me. It could have been easy for me to go off-track. After the success of Kedarnath and Simmba, one more box-office success and I could have gone daamadol. You never know.”
Sara continued, “It made me realize what works and what doesn’t work. It re-reminded me that anything that is not organic and not coming truly from the heart shouldn’t be done. And maybe there were moments in the performance that were dishonest or not truthful. There were moments on the sets where I was saying things that I don’t know if I fully and truly understood and meant. Maybe, I made the mistake of judging Zoe’s character a little bit. Maybe, I was not in the state of mind at that time.”
Sara Ali Khan also said that it took time for her to get out of that zone, “It takes a toll on you when you know that your work has not bee appreciated. It does take time for you to bounce back. The audience started to forgive me after Atrangi Re (2021) and even more after Zara Hatke Zara Bachke (2023). But it’s only now that I am starting to forgive myself.”
Sara confessed, “I called Aanand R Lai and told him, ‘Atrangi Re is a great script. This character is outstanding. Are you sure you don’t want to call Alia Bhatt (to do the role instead)?’”
When asked why she asked such a question, Sara Ali Khan explained, “Because I was very nervous. This was after Love Aaj Kal. He told me, ‘On a personal note, I’ll deal with you. But Rinku is not a character that you can play on the back foot. So you can’t do this (have doubts) right now or ever’. That really helped pick me up.”
