'Shah Rukh Is Ready To Direct A Film'

It’s been 15 years since Karan Johar’s My Name Is Khan released, and saw Shah Rukh Khan in an entirely different light.

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“Who am I to pose new challenges to Shah Rukh? He challenges himself every day of the year. All I could do was give him a role that my writer and I had worked on for almost two years.”

How do you recall your best film?

My Name Is Khan wasn’t easy. It’s the socio-political journey of Shah Rukh’s character Rizwan from the age of four to 40. In his journey, Shah Rukh encounters major political upheavals, from a communal riot in India to 9/11 in the US. But my film is not about any specific political event. Nor is it about Asperger’s Syndrome. My hero is autistic. He couldn’t be neuro-typical because he had to see life with a honesty and clarity denied to normal people. My Name Is Khan excited me. For the first time, I was directing a film that had characters and situations I didn’t know about. I was excited by the research that I had to do for this film. It challenged me.

Were you also posing a new challenge for Shah Rukh?

Who am I to pose new challenges to Shah Rukh? He challenges himself every day of the year. All I could do was give him a role that my writer and I had worked on for almost two years.

There were visa problems for some Muslim members of your cast?

Yes. We had certain legal issues. We had to make some changes to accommodate the developments. I believe in going by the law of every land. That’s what we did in LA when troubles arose.