When Rishi Kapoor said Irrfan khan didn’t know acting for this reason d-day completes 8 years. D-Day, directed by Nikkhil Advani, closes eight years on Monday. The film stars the deceased Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan Khan along with Arjun Rampal, Huma Qureshi, and Shruti Haasan.
The film, which received good reviews at the box office, has a special reason.
D-Day went down as the only film to see Irrfan and Rishi sharing screen space. Unfortunately, Bollywood lost two actors to cancer in 2020. D-Day saw Rishi play Don while Irrfan plays an undercover RAW agent. Director Nikkhil Advani spoke with film critic Rajeev Masand about working with the two legends in his 2013 spy thriller. He revealed that Rishi Kapoor complained about Irrfan.
“When they got together, Rishi Kapoor was told that Irrfan Khan was a great actor. So he wanted to see it and luckily he was doing this one scene for me that Irrfan improvised. And Irrfan never sends the same signal again. So Rishi Kapoor called me and said, ‘Usko Samjao, Usko acting Nahi Aati Hai’ (Tell me, I don’t know acting.) Otherwise, I don’t know what to do or what to say.’
So I explained to him, ‘Don’t worry, sir. Don’t worry, I’ll start talking whenever I want to.’ They were very different but very special.
Now the film is even more special.” said the director. He also remembered Irrfan Khan persuading Rishi Kapoor to spend the night in the Kuchi Desert, promising ‘Chicken and Drink’. “We were filming in the desert and Chintuji drove two hours to the hotel while Irrfan and a lot of the team pitched their tents in tents. I was reluctant to shoot early in the morning, but we had to take a photo together because there was a sunrise shoot this time.
Irrfan finally persuaded him to spend the night. Join us in the desert with a promise of chicken cleanup and alcohol. It was an almost impossible feat at Kutch, but he delivered on his promise and I got the opportunity,” Nikkhil told Mid-Day. Nikkhil previously admitted that Rishi Kapoor’s role as Rauf Lala in Agneepath made him believe he could pull off Goldman’s character. “Agneepath’s Rauf Lala made me believe Rishi Kapoor was my Goldman (his character from ‘D-Day’).
I had to persuade him through a look test a few months before filming started,” he told News18. Last year, the filmmaker shared a clip featuring D-Day’s Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan Khan, which went viral on social media. Irrfan and Rishi died one day later. Nikkhil wrote: The movie that funnily changed my life will now be remembered for a different reason.” Last year, Rishi Kapoor died on April 30, after a two-year battle with leukemia, and Irrfan died on April 29, 2020.
