When Shah Rukh Khan regretted replacing Aishwarya Rai in ‘Chalte Chalte’ due to Salman Khan: ‘My hands were tied’

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan have made a memorable pair on-screen! While they effortlessly played siblings in ‘Josh’, they looked great as lovers in ‘Devdas’. But did you know that the duo were going to share screen space in many more movies? Many years ago, Simi Garewal had mentioned on her show that ‘Veer Zara’ was written for Aishwarya and she was replaced in five other movies with Shah Rukh Khan. Aishwarya had responded to it and said that she doesn’t know the reason for it, whatsoever.

Meanwhile, an old video of Shah Rukh talking about this has gone viral on Reddit now. The actor can be heard expressing his sadness and regret for having Aishwarya replaced. However, he admitted that he wasn’t the ‘only’ producer of ‘Chalte Chalte’, hence it was not in his hand. He said, “Very saddened at the fact that Aishwarya was a very close friend, I have done some really marvelous films with her and I genuinely mean that. She has been one of my favourite co-actresses and we’ve done some really nice work — Josh, Mohabbatein, Devdas — and enjoyed together, and we get along really well. Personally, it is very saddening not to… for something to reach at this level. I feel very sorry about it and I genuinely do.”

He added, “As a producer, my hands were tied because I am not the only producer. I have a team of people and this time we also have UTV who is working with us. The collective decision of 10-11 people. We were also not been doing very well as producers. That was at stake. The whole company’s reputation is at stake, we wanted to finish the film in three to four months. Personally, if you ask me, Aishwarya is very professional but I think we were a little sadden by the whole affair and we thought it wasn’t meant to be. It was not superstition, it was a professional decision and even professionally we feel very bad. There’s no two ways about it.”

As per reports, Salman had created a ruckus on the sets of ‘Chalte Chalte’ which starred Aishwarya and they were dating at that point of time. Though, both Salman and Aishwarya had apologised to Shah Rukh, she was later replaced in the movie by Rani Mukerji. ‘Veer Zara’ eventually, went on to star Preity Zinta and also had Rani.