Imtiaz Ali Opens Up on Shah Rukh Khan-Anushka Sharma's 'Jab Harry Met Sejal': 'Ek Ajeeb Sa Dard...'

Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali, who has been in the news for his acclaimed film ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’, has opened up about the box office failure of Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma starrer ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal’. The director said that he tried to “experiment” with the 2017 romance comedy, but it failed terribly.

Despite hit pairing of SRK and Anushka, Jab Harry Met Sejal turned out to be a massive failure at the box office, having a lifetime gross of reported Rs 60 crore. In an interview with Ranveer Allahbadia, Imtiaz Ali spoke about one of the biggest flops of SRK’s career.

“‘So what if it didn’t do well, it is still your film,’ I was told. Toh mujhe bohot dard hua. It is an unfortunate child. I felt a sense of ownership over the film, I felt like telling it, ‘I am not embarrassed of you brother, you are mine, as much as any other film of mine.’ So, in that moment, I felt a strange melancholy, ek ajeeb sa dard mehsoos hua, that oh this was an unsuccessful film, which I didn’t feel it in this manner back then. But I could feel at this point. Back then, calculations were happening, I was reading people’s faces, I could sense disappointment. I had dengue, so I was also bed ridden for a month,” Imtiaz recalled.

Imtiaz Ali said he “processed the pain over a period of time” and added that at some point it’s important to “let it go”. “I feel lucky about all my failures. Now Jab Harry Met Sejal didn’t work, still I felt there was something good happening. I am not perturbed by it. You shouldn’t be so bothered with success or failure,” he added.

In an old interview with Telegraph India, SRK had also spoken out about the film’s failure and said that he “let people down” with Jab Harry Met Sejal. “But I didn’t want to let anyone down; I just liked the fact that koi story nahin thi, sirf ek ring ke chakkar mein the two people (SRK’s Harry and Anushka Sharma’s Sejal) kheechey chale jaate hain… it was very organic, slice-of-life thi. The other day I met a director who mentioned the term ‘slice-of-life’ and I said, ‘nahin, poora pumpkin do mujhe iss baar,'” he said.