Irrfan Khan, who passed away in 2020 after a long battle with cancer, remains one of the finest actors Indian cinema has ever known. Known for balancing art-house and mainstream films with equal brilliance, he left behind an unmatched legacy. Filmmaker Tanuja Chandra, who directed him in Qarib Qarib Singlle (2017), recently opened up about what it was like to work with him. Though she admitted that Irrfan wasn’t the easiest actor to direct, she fondly described the experience as “beautiful.” The film also starred Parvathy.Speaking on The Pooja Bhatt Show, Tanuja shared that it took Irrfan almost a year to agree to do the film after she first approached him. During that time, she was regularly in touch with his wife, Sutapa Sikdar. In fact, when Tanuja once mentioned that she might work on another project, Sutapa suggested Farhan Akhtar’s name for it. Tanuja recalled Irrfan’s playful reaction, saying, “Farhan ke sath banaoge (You will make it with Farhan)?” She also remembered Sutapa telling her that Irrfan would often rehearse his lines late at night, “saying the dialogues out loud at 3 am while walking around the house.”Tanuja spoke about filming with Irrfan across different locations in India, describing him as both “beautiful” and “difficult” to work with. “He didn’t like to do too many takes because he thought that the spontaneity would go away,” she said. She also shared a funny memory about her sound team struggling to get him to speak louder. “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?)’.”
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Since Irrfan often delivered his lines under his breath, Tanuja revealed that he would sometimes change his dialogues later during dubbing and no one could tell. “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, calling him a “great actor” with an “inexplicable magic” in his performances.
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