‘You’ll make Kal Ho Naa Ho again’: Irrfan Khan refused D-Day, accepted only when Anurag Kashyap said ‘Nikkhil Advani behak gaya tha’ | Bollywood News
4 min readMumbaiFeb 4, 2026 07:50 PM IST
Those eyes. Those bloody eyes of Irrfan Khan. That line, by itself, says everything about the talent the late legend possessed. One could go on counting the many performances where his eyes shone the brightest, moments where they spoke before words ever could. And yet, not many would include Nikkhil Advani’s highly underrated D-Day in that list, where, once again, his eyes shocked, disarmed, evaded, and confounded, and in doing so, moved you. What makes it even more compelling is the knowledge that despite how extraordinary he was in the film, he almost rejected it. He was unsure of Advani’s capabilities as a director, uncertain whether he could helm a no-nonsense spy actioner.
In an exclusive conversation with SCREEN, Advani revealed Irrfan’s initial reaction upon hearing the script. “Irrfan kept telling me, ‘Yaar, tu Kal Ho Naa Ho banayega toh. Kal Ho Naa Ho ke jaise beech mein gaane daalega. Itna achha script hai, tu yeh sab kar dega uss mein.’” (You’ll make it like Kal Ho Naa Ho, add songs in between. It’s such a good script, you’ll end up doing all that to it.)
Advani went on to share that it was Anurag Kashyap who ultimately convinced Irrfan to come on board. “Then it was Kashyap who told him, ‘Arey, isne Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin likhi thi. Yeh behak gaya tha abhi, wapas aa gaya hai. Tu kar le, kar le.’” (He wrote Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin. He had gone off track for a bit, but he’s back now. You should do it, go ahead.”)
Irrfan Khan was briefly insecure when he heard that Rishi Kapoor would play Dawood Ibrahim in D-Day.
Advani also pointed out the irony that despite Kashyap’s influence on many of Irrfan’s career decisions, the two never actually collaborated on a film together. Several projects Irrfan took up, he said, were based on Kashyap’s informal advice, “do this, do that”, rather than formal collaborations.
The filmmaker further revealed that Irrfan briefly felt insecure when he learned that Rishi Kapoor would be playing the role of Dawood Ibrahim. “When I called him and told him that Rishi Kapoor is doing Dawood, he said, ‘Yaar, abhi toh sab kuch le jaayega woh phir. Lines bhi saari achhi ussi character ke paas hain. Rishi sir is too good.’” (Man, he’s going to take everything away now. All the best lines are with that character. Rishi sir is too good.)
In the same conversation, Advani reflected on how D-Day became a turning point in his career. “D-Day didn’t just change me as a filmmaker, it made people call me a filmmaker. Till then, I was struggling to be known as one. When the D-Day reviews came, somebody wrote, ‘Can’t believe the director of Kal Ho Naa Ho has made this film.’ Suddenly, they acknowledged that I was the director of Kal Ho Naa Ho.”
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Watch the episode of Cult Comebacks on D-Day here:
He also addressed the film’s box-office failure, noting that despite its commercial fate, D-Day was widely appreciated within the industry. “I was very happy just with the fact that I made the film the way I wanted to. We did around 20 previews, and from Amitabh Bachchan to Javed Akhtar, everyone came. By the time it was about to release, people from the industry would call and say, ‘Can we come watch it? We’ve heard it’s fantastic.’ We had back-to-back shows, one 6 o’clock, then 9 o’clock, for days.”
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