Angrezi Medium director Homi Adajania chokes up while speaking about Irrfan Khan: ‘We’re making a freaking movie, not curing cancer’

Filmmaker Homi Adajania choked up at the mention of Irrfan Khan, with whom he made the upcoming Angrezi Medium. “You’re f**king me,” Homi told journalist Anupama Chopra when she asked him how Irrfan was doing at the moment. The actor has been diagnosed with cancer, and shot the film while undergoing treatment.

He said, “We were discussing the whole thing, and he told me ‘I don’t regret for a moment having to go through this.’ He said, ‘I don’t think in 40 lifetimes I would have got the realisation I have got.’ He said ‘I was such an idiot before. I used to think of myself as Irrfan Khan the superstar, the actor, and that defined me. That was my definition of myself. And today I realise that we put these labels on ourselves and we start believing that that’s what we are.’”

Homi said that Irrfan now knows ‘Irrfan Khan the human being’. “In that sense I feel that he is in an extremely liberated and evolved space. He’s fighting, and his family is around him. And it is what it is.”

Homi said that during the shoot, the crew was feeding off Irrfan’s strength and energy, rather than the other way around. He said, “Considering the circumstances and the predicament that he was in, and then to come out and show us the magic that he does when the camera starts rolling, to show us the resilience he has by just being so professional, not complaining for a second about anything...”

He said that sometimes he would ask Irrfan to tell him if he was too tired to shoot, but the actor never complained. He added, “We’re making a movie. We aren’t curing cancer, we aren’t sending someone to Mars. It’s a freaking movie. I told him this. I said on Friday the movie will come and go. All we’ll be left with are the memories making it, and that’s what we should cherish.”

Irrfan in a recent interview to Hindustan Times spoke about his headspace. He said, “I had become excessively busy (before falling ill), so much so that I almost missed (watching) my sons (Babil and Ayan) become young adults from little boys. I was running out of time all the time. Ironically now, I have kind of an idea what ‘running out of time’ actually means. So, I am just counting my blessings and thanking everyone who has prayed for me.”

Angrezi Medium, which also stars Kareena Kapoor Khan and Radhika Madan in supporting roles, is slated for release on Friday.

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