This is what Shah Rukh Khan has to about the Raees-Kaabil clash

Shah Rukh Khan has been promoting his upcoming Rahul Dholakia directorial Raees. The film is expected to a blockbuster hit as SRK is playing a gangster in the film. The film is clashing with Hrithik Roshan and Yami Gautam starrer Kaabil. The Badshah of Bollywood tells it all in this interview…

Rahul Dholakia’s cinema is starkly different from the one you’re known for. How important was it to strike a balance with Raees?
Rahul makes really offbeat, artistic films for which he has even won National Awards. But he had a reality-based and researched story that’s not based on one character but on a lot of people who did bootlegging, which was rampant in the ’80s everywhere. The idea was to set the film from 1985 to 1995 to make to it more realistic and to take a few moments from there as the background. It is not an expensive film, but it had a bigger scope. So I told him, ‘You could make this one like you make your other films — much cheaper — but with me, it will get a little big.’ I cannot go and actually shoot on the roads, we have to create sets. The action will have to turn out a little differently than what you have imagined. It won’t be shot in a day’s time. He really wanted to give this film that spin, because it was fictional. That’s why he came to Farhan Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani and me to guide him with the commerce part of it. He said that he will keep it realistic as much as possible within that world. That combination is very interesting. Zaalima is not the world of Rahul. Laila is not shot as a typical item song, but its part of the story-telling. All those bits make it a more watchable film than perhaps a regular commercial over-the-top film or an even reality-based offbeat film. Even the casting has been kept real. It’s like what we attempted in I this is in that line of cinema.

You’ve said that doing a mindless film is difficult for you. Comment.
When I have to do an over-the-top commercial film — like a Chennai Express or a Dilwale or a Happy New Year, it’s something that I have not done too often. Flying cars or suddenly becoming a guy who turns out to be a world-class dancer or fight eight to 10 guys in the mud… that’s exciting as an actor. That’s a space I had not gone into. It’s as exciting as doing a Fan. I don’t know why people don’t realise that just doing something which has a serious swing on it. Is it that I should like only ballet? Can’t I like dirty dancing too? It becomes very strange when people think of actors only in a classical mould.

Only when he does a Fan or a Dear Zindagi, he’s meaningful. But as an actor, it’s extremely enjoyable to even say lines like ‘Hum