Acclaimed choreographer Saroj Khan, fondly known as Masterji, was known to be a hard taskmaster, and actress Sonali Bendre once experienced her wrath. Sonali remembered the experience vividly, sharing it with everyone when Khan was reportedly ready to kill her. Bendre was a versatile actress, but it seems she had a hard time on the dance floor. Keep scrolling for more.
Khan was an esteemed personality who changed things in the industry as she was the first woman choreographer in Bollywood. The late choreographer worked for over forty years and choreographed over 3000 songs. Sonali debuted with Aag and won the Filmfare Award for New Face of the Year. She worked with Khan in the English Babu Desi Mem and the Humma Humma song in Mani Ratnam‘s Bombay, among others.
According to an Indian Express report, Sonali Bendre, once in an interview with Mid Day, revealed that while working on English, Babu Desi Mem Saroj Khan wanted to kill her. The actress struggled with the moves as she played a bar dancer in the film but couldn’t dance. The actress recalled, “I had done English Babu Desi Mem where Saroj Khan was ready to kill me because I couldn’t dance, and I was playing a bar dancer. Can you imagine what she was going through?”
She continued, “I was struggling. Every hour I wasn’t working, I was trying to learn how to dance and Ahmed (Khan) was Saroj ji’s assistant at that time, and I remember how he would bribe me with chocolates and ice cream, he would pick me up from my home in Lokhandwala, take me to a rehearsal hall and he would teach me.”
Sonali Bendre was exhausted after one point and said, “I was like. ‘I can’t do it; I am fed up,’ and he would say, ‘Come on, just one step, just once more. This is the chocolate, this is the ice cream’. He would literally bribe me like a little child.”
For the uninitiated, Saroj Khan passed away on July 3, 2020, due to a sudden cardiac arrest. Meanwhile, Sonali Bendre was last seen in The Broken News Season 2, which aired in 2024.
For more such throwbacks, stay tuned to Koimoi!
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