Irrfan Khan passed away in 2020 after a long battle with cancer but stories of his acting prowess still live on. The actor also had this uncanny ability to balance material and mainstream well, and stood out in both types of films. In a recent interview, Tanuja Chandra, who directed him in Qarib Qarib Singlle (2017), reminisced that working with him was beautiful but he wasn’t very easy to work with.
On The Pooja Bhatt Show, Tanuja recalled that Irrfan took one year to agree to the film after she approached him. She was in regular contact with his wife Sutapa Sikdar. In fact, when Tanuja actually said that perhaps they should collaborate on another project, and Sutapa suggested Farhan Akhtar’s name for the film, Irrfan jumped in saying, “Farhan ke sath banaoge (You will make it with Farhan)?,” Tanuja recalled. She shared that Sutapa would tell her about Irrfan saying the dialogues of the film out loud at 3 am while walking around his house when he was preparing for it.
“Working with Irrfan was beautiful. Difficult, he was not easy. He didn’t like to do too many takes because he thought that the spontaneity would go away,” said Tanuja. She also remembered how her sound engineer would request Irrfan to speak loudly but the actor would just not oblige. “At the time of dubbing, I remember, my poor sound designer would say, ‘Irrfan ji, thoda loud boliye na (please speak loudly)’. He would say, ‘Kyu? Tumko sunayi nahi de raha kya? (Why? Can’t you hear me?)’.”
Tanuja said that since a lot of Irrfan’s dialogues were spoken under the breath, he could manage to change them at the time of dubbing. “The great thing was that because of his mumbling, he used to change the entire dialogue in dubbing and you couldn’t make out the difference because his mouth is doing whatever it is doing, it’s doing its own unique dance,” she said.
Qarib Qarib Singlle also starred Pravathy Thiruvothu. Irrfan’s last film was Angrezi Medium (2020).
