India has seen some of the most beautiful actresses in Bollywood, and the talented Juhi Chawla is one of them. During her first project with Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla had a funny and unexpected first impression of him. When she was about to work together on ‘Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman‘, something very different from what she was dreaming of appeared when she met Shah Rukh.
In an amusing anecdote that Juhi narrated on the show *Entertainment Ki Raat* some years back, she revealed that the film’s producer, Vivek Vaswani, had told her prior to meeting Shah Rukh that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Aamir Khan. According to her, that’s all she had expected-Vivek had set the expectations so high: a “chocolate-faced, good-looking hero” like Aamir Khans. She was very eager to do the film because she had such a picture in her mind, so she thought that her co-star Shah Rukh would be much like Aamir was already since he was an established actor then.
When Juhi did finally come to the set and saw Shah Rukh for the first time, it came as a shock to her. She recalled seeing a “thin, brown-colored man wearing a white shirt,” and immediately thought to herself, “From which angle does he resemble Aamir Khan? I have been cheated!” Juhi jokingly joked that she had expected someone way different coming from the description made by the producer, and was a little disappointed when reality did not conform to what she thought it should be. She humorously quipped, “This is not what I signed up for!”
But still, Juhi did the film. In due course of time, Shah Rukh and Juhi were such close friends that they did many films together and many became a sort of biggest hits for Bollywood. Today, she likes to joke that it was actually she who made a superstar out of Shah Rukh. The two remain close even till today and it is ‘Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman’ that started their successful professional collaboration.
This is a sweet behind-the-scenes account that actually reveals how first impressions sometimes can be misleading; it doesn’t always decide the final outcome. What started as an unexpected meeting between Juhi and Shah Rukh eventually blossomed into one of Bollywood’s most memorable on-screen partnerships.
