Friendships in Bollywood are quite fragile as stars, who have been friends for years, suddenly turn foes within a night in the industry. But it requires guts and courage for the biggest celebrities to sort out their differences and come back together again, and is not often seen in the Hindi film industry.
This happened in the early 2000s when Karan Johar and Kareena Kapoor Khan patched up after they didn't talk to each other for 18 months. The director had offered the 2003 romantic drama Kal Ho Naa Ho to Kareena first, but then she demanded the same fees as Shah Rukh Khan for the film.
Karan had written about the same in his autobiography An Unsuitable Boy, "The weekend of Mujhse Dosti Karoge’s release, I offered her Kal Ho Naa Ho, and she asked for the same money that Shah Rukh Khan was getting. I said, ‘Sorry'. I was very hurt. I told my father, ‘Leave that negotiation room’ and I called her. She didn’t take my call, and I said, ‘We’re not taking her.’ And we signed Preity Zinta instead. Kareena and I didn’t speak to each other for almost a year. For a year, we looked through each other at parties. It was very idotic. She was a kid; she’s a decade younger than me."
When Yash Johar was undergoing his cancer treatment in New York in 2003, Kareena called Karan and tried to patch up, but it was after Yash's death in June 2004 that they finally buried the hatchet
The filmmaker further wrote in his book, "We were releasing Kal Ho Naa Ho in November. We had shot the film in June, July, August and in September I had to shoot the songs, make the promos and so on. So I had to head back, while my father continued the treatment in New York. That was the time Kareena Kapoor called me. It was August. We had not spoken for nine months. She called and said, 'I heard about Yash uncle’. She got really emotional on the phone, and she said, ‘I love you and I am so sorry I haven’t been in touch. Don’t worry'."
In the third episode of Koffee With Karan 8 featuring Sara Ali Khan and Ananya Panday, the director recalled this whole incident as he said, "We (he and Kareena) didn’t speak for a year and half. It was over a film, it was over Kal Ho Na Ho and it was only when my father was diagnosed with cancer that actually she called me, she was silent, and I was silent. She was like I don’t know what to say, I said, don’t say anything, I know you are there. When he passed away, she was in Bangkok, we still had not mended, the point she landed from her shoot, she came home. We spent all night just chatting. We went back to where we were. When we had fought, I said I am never going to speak with her again."
The new episodes of Koffee With Karan 8 drop each Thursday at 12 am on Disney+ Hotstar.
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