How Rajkumar Santoshi Hid Aishwarya Rai Bachchan Villainous Twist In Khakee

One of the most effective twists in Hindi cinema this millennium comes in Rajkumar Santoshi’s 2004 neo-noir action thriller Khakee, when Aishwarya Rai’s character Mahalakshmi turns against her team of police officers to side with her love interest, Ajay Devgn’s Yashwant Angre. However, Santoshi revealed recently that he didn’t reveal Aishwarya’s character arc to her for the longest time during the shoot.

Despite Aishwarya Rai Bachchan being “a very good family friend”, Rajkumar Santoshi said he initially did not reveal the full arc of her character in Khakee to the actress.

In an interaction with Galatta Plus, Santoshi said, “Whenever a lead character is portraying a negative role, they always have a backstory justifying them. Like their mother was cruel.” However, he argued that wasn’t the case in Khakee. “There’s no justification. She (Aishwarya’s character Mahalakshmi) is bad. Period,” he added.

The filmmaker revealed that even the film’s other lead actors were unaware of Mahalakshmi’s true intentions until midway through the shoot.

“Halfway through the shoot, I had a narration of that with Amit ji (Amitabh Bachchan), Ajay, and Akshay (Kumar). That time, I told them about her arc. They were shocked! ‘How did Aishwarya agree to do this role?’ I said, ‘She doesn’t know. I didn’t tell her.’ They were like, ‘What nonsense! The film would get shelved! Aishwarya would refuse to do the film.”

However, Aishwarya’s parents found the twist very “interesting” and “different”, particularly for a heroine in the early 2000s. “I told her, ‘Why I didn’t tell you initially is because I felt it’d stay in your mind subconsciously and you’d give it away.’ It was such a big shocking point that nobody could’ve expected it. Even she didn’t know she’d betray the team because she always thought she’s a part of the team,” said Santoshi.

But Aishwarya Rai went on to do Khakee happily, and her role did turn out to be the film’s most unexpected twist. Co-written by Rajkumar Santoshi and Shridhar Raghavan, Khakee revolved around a police team’s mission to escort an accused terrorist (Atul Kulkarni) from a small Maharashtra town to Mumbai.

The police team consisted of DCP Anant Kumar Shrivastav (Amitabh Bachchan), Senior Inspector Shekhar Varma (Akshay Kumar), ex inspector Yashwant Angare, and Sub Inspector Ashwin Gupte (Tusshar Kapoor), among others. The ensemble cast also consisted of Jaya Prada, Prakash Raj, Tanuja, Ashwini Kalsekar, and Lara Dutta in a guest appearance in the popular dance song “Aisa Jadoo.”