Mita Vashisht spoke about her experience shooting for Mani Ratnam’s ‘Dil Se’ in a recent interview. She recalled that there was no clear script and it kept changing constantly, adding that she was disappointed with the film just a few days after the shoot began. She also praised Shah Rukh Khan as a wonderful and supportive co-actor, citing the example of a fight scene she shot with him, but which was later cut from the final draft of the film.

In an interview to India Today’s sister channel Lallantop, Mita Vashisht spoke highly of Shah Rukh Khan. “Shah Rukh Khan is a great co-actor,” she said and recalled how protective Shah Rukh Khan was of her during a fight sequence shot at Humayun’s Tomb. It involved hand-to-hand combat and Mita revealed, “Shah Rukh Khan put his hand behind my head so that when he hit me, my head would not take the impact. He put his hand and then slapped me.”

She remembered how Mani Ratnam himself explained the scene to her and that it was a 6-minute long war sequence. He explained that it would be like an injured tigress attacking a lion. In this scene, Mita Vashisht hit Shah Rukh Khan with a stone and she revealed that Shah Rukh got hurt and his head was cut because of the stone slipping. “The unit said ‘what, you injured Shah Rukh’ and it was like ‘just take some ice and apply it on the wound and get it over with’. He was very supportive in that way, because we knew each other from before.”

However, the scene was later deleted from the film and Mita Vashisht recalls it as a very sad scene. She feels the scene was brilliant and would have shown the lead protagonist as a vulnerable person.

During the same interview, she also said, “Mani Ratnam kept changing scenes in ‘Dil Se’. When I look at it now, it’s a beautiful film. But at that time, I felt that the second half of the film, which was there and which he kept changing because Manisha (Koirala) was the heroine, I was disappointed with him.”

He gave the example of the scene in which he made Manisha Koirala wear a bomb jacket, and how Manu Ratnam asked the costume designer to give him a full sleeve shirt after a good shot, as he was overpowering Manisha Koirala. He shared that he had worked on his body, building up his biceps to look like a killer, while Koirala did not notice him.

He remembered being told that his role would be better than the one he got in ‘Drohkaal’, for which he won an award. “Nobody knew about their characters except Shah Rukh Khan. I was disappointed when the shooting began,” he said.

‘Dil Se’ was released in 1998.