Soha Ali Khan replaced by Rani Mukerji in debut film with Shah Rukh Khan

Actor Soha Ali Khan revealed that she quit her bank job for a Bollywood debut, but was replaced from her first movie with superstar Shah Rukh Khan, after A-list actor Rani Mukerji came on board.

Soha Ali Khan, who comes from the affluent Pataudi family, being the youngest daughter of Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan and veteran actor Sharmila Tagore, revealed in a new interview that she had started working in a bank after completing a Master’s degree from London. However, she was always impressed by the massive paychecks of actors.

Therefore, when actor-filmmaker Amol Palekar approached her for his film ‘Paheli’ (2005), she took no time to grab the opportunity and left her bank job for a film debut. But she was replaced from the fantasy musical after big stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji joined the project.

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“It was my first film. I had to pay INR17,000 as my rent,” Khan recalled in the interview. “I quit Citibank.  I was earning a good salary. And my plan was to leave for London. I was thinking that I would get a work permit there and I would eventually settle there.”

“Then Amol Palekar came to me, and he spoke to me about the script. I had been offered some films because of my brother (Saif Ali Khan) and my mother (Sharmila Tagore),” she continued to share. “He approached me and I said, ‘I definitely want to do this.’ He said, ‘Then you will have to quit your job because it will take a couple of months’. Back then, I didn’t understand that if you haven’t been signed, and if you haven’t shot, then it means that it’s not 100 per cent.”

“I didn’t know that, so I quit my job,” the ‘Rang De Basanti’ actor said, adding that she was then removed from the project, after SRK took over not only as actor, but also producer.

“Amol ji called me and said, ‘Shah Rukh Khan is playing the role’. I said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ He said, ‘No, you don’t understand. That means you are not playing this role. Somebody else will be playing this.’ I was like, ‘Ouch’. Then I was like, ‘What do I do now? How do I pay my rent?’” Khan remembered.

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Notably, Khan eventually made her movie debut with a Bengali feature, ‘Iti Srikanta’ (2004). Her first Bollywood movie was multi-starrer ‘Dil Maange More’, released the same year, but her breakthrough came a couple of years later in Aamir Khan’s ‘Rang De Basanti’.