How did SRK pick up His Famous ‘Darr’ Stammer?

Yash Chopra’s Darr (1993) is famous for Shah Rukh Khan’s terrifying stammer.

The star played Rahul Mehra in the film. Rahul is obsessively in love with Kiran Malhotra (Juhi Chawla).

Rahul’s love for Kiran is so deep that he is unable to say her name in one breath.

Therefore, he constantly utters the line: “I love you, K-K-K-Kiran.”

This phrase went down in history as one of SRK’s most memorable dialogues.

But how did the star pick up this stammer?

In an interview, Juhi Chawla revealed that it was Yash Chopra who inspired Shah Rukh for this phrase.

She explained: “I didn’t notice, but Shah Rukh Khan was observant.

“Shah Rukh once revealed that he picked up ‘K-K-K-Kiran’ from Yash Chopra who used to stammer a little.

“He said, ‘I am going to use it in the film’ and it started from there.

“Thank God for that!”

Upon its release, Darr was a massive success at the box office.

One of SRK’s early films, the movie catapulted him to instant stardom.

However, SRK was not the original choice for the film.

The part of Rahul was originally offered to Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgn, but when things did not materialise, Yash Chopra approached Aamir Khan.

Despite agreeing to do the film, Aamir wanted Yash to give him and co-star Sunny Deol a joint narration of the script.

Delving into this incident, Aamir said:

“When I do a film that has more than one hero, I request the director to make us sit together and narrate the story.

“So we are satisfied with our roles and no problems will occur going forward.

“For example, when Andaz Apna Apna (1994) was being made, Rajkumar Santoshi narrated the script to me and Salman Khan together.

“In this case, that was not possible. Yash Ji did not feel that he should give a joint narration.

“So on that basis, I was removed from the project.”

Ironically, Sunny was angry after the release of the film, as he felt that more prominence was given to SRK’s character.

This allegedly sparked a 16-year feud between Sunny and SRK.

Moreover, Sunny never worked with Yash Chopra after Darr and is yet to collaborate with Yash Raj Films again.

Meanwhile, the film kicked off a long association between SRK and Yash.

He went on to feature in every Yash Chopra directorial after Darr.

On the work front, SRK was last seen in Rajkumar Hirani’s Dunki (2023).