Bollywood Flashback: When Dimple Kapadia Refused to Play Mom-in-law to Juhi Chawla!
February 14, 2022Recently, talented actresses such as Madhuri Dixit, Tabu and Raveena Tandon rejected Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do for a simple reason that they did not want to play Priyanka Chopra and Ranveer Singh’s mother in that film. Well we can understand their reasons as the age gap between the actors is quite less. This has been a common norm in our Hindi film industry right since its golden days where a yesteryear actress refused to play a mother’s role. Well, today we read the circumstances when an actress rejected a film just because she did not want to play mother-in-law to a younger actress!
Well, it all began in the early 90’s when actress-turned-director Hema Malini convinced Dimple Kapadia to play a mother’s role to newcomer actress Divya Bharti in the movie Dil Aashna Hai. Dimple at the time was doing heroine-oriented roles along with second leads and also a few experimental films. She however, agreed to do Hema Malini’s film because of her friendship with her and also for the reason that the movie had other contemporary actresses (Amrita Singh & Sonu Walia) who were younger to her, but with similar kind of roles.
While working in the film Dimple bonded with Divya Bharti and wanted to work more with this young talent. It was at that time director Raj Kanwar signed Divya Bharti for two films (Laadla & Kartavya) after the huge success of Deewana. Kartavya starred Sanjay Kapoor in a pivotal role and required a talented actress to play his mother. Divya, who was to play Sanjay’s wife wanted Dimple to play her mother-in-law and recommended her to Raj Kanwar. Together they convinced Dimple to do the film.
Raj started shooting both the films simultaneously. However, he had to stop his projects when Divya Bharti died a mysterious death. After a while the makers decided to re-start the film with Juhi Chawla as the heroine of the film. Raj sorted the dates of his artist and approached Dimple for her dates. Dimple refused to give any of her dates and wanted to walk out of the film. The makers were already suffering huge losses due to the death of Divya Bharti as they had to re-shoot all her scenes, now if Dimple leaves the film the losses would double up as most of her scenes were shot with Sanjay Kapoor and other actors. Raj Kanwar tried his level best to convince Dimple but she refused to budge, insisting that she would not play mother-in-law to Juhi Chawla.
After several failed attempts the makers approached film associations but nothing seemed to work in their favour as it fell on deaf ears. Finally, the makers agreed to part away from Dimple and roped in Aruna Irani for the role. The association barred Dimple to sign any new film for few months as a punishment. The punishment was negligible for Dimple as she was happy to exit the film where she had to play mother-in-law to an actress who was playing lead roles opposite many of her contemporary heroes and is younger to her by merely ten years.
Kartavya released after the long gap of four years and despite of having some good songs and fantastic performances by Aruna Irani (who got Filmfare nomination for best supporting actress) failed to meet the expectation.
Fun Facts:
The age difference between Dimple and Divya Bharti was around seventeen years whereas with Juhi was just around ten years.
Kartavya released in 1995 and in the same year Dimple’s daughter Twinkle Kapadia made her debut in Hindi films as a heroine in the movie ‘Barsaat’ with Bobby Deol.
Dimple Kapadia and Juhi Chawla worked together in only one film – ‘Luck By Chance’ (2009).
