‘It’s tragic that no one has cast me alongside Madhavan again’: Dia Mirza on 25 years of RHTDM

25 years ago on this day, Dia Mirza was seen for the first time on the big screen as Reena Malhotra, the dewy-eyed, affable leading lady of Gautham Vasudev Menon’s 2001 romantic film Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein. A Hindi remake of Menon’s 2001 Tamil hit Minnale, it also starred R Madhavan, in his debut Bollywood role. However, Dia reveals it wasn’t the first, but the third film, she signed as an actor.

“It was very interesting. So, Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein wasn’t the first film I signed. It was Om Jai Jagdish,” Dia Mirza said recently on Screen Spotlight. She recalled Anupam Kher, who made his directorial debut with the 2002 film, along with its lead actor Anil Kapoor, were in Hyderabad for a shoot, when they spotted Dia in the lobby of their hotel. She was there as part of her homecoming celebration following her win in the Miss India Asia Pacific pageant.

They came up to her and offered her a role. However, she confessed since she’d just won a beauty pageant, she wasn’t sure if she could start acting immediately. But they agreed to wait, since they meant to start filming much later. The next hurdle was convincing her parents. “Mr. Kher very generously called my parents, came home, and convinced them to allow me to be a part of the film,” recalled Dia.

When she relocated to Mumbai from her hometown of Hyderabad, Anupam Kher even gave her a token amount of Rs 11,000, from which she bought the first pieces of furniture for her new home. But while doing workshops with veteran theatre director Feroz Abbas Khan, the film’s producer Vashu Bhagnani offered Dia another film. No, that wasn’t Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein either, but Ashu Trikha’s 2001 action romance Deewaanapan.

Dia Mirza won Miss India Asia Pacific in 2000.

“He’d had a situation with another actor, so wanted me to step in. So, Deewaanapan was the first film I’d started shooting for. My first day on set was with Arjun Rampal,” revealed Dia. Director Ashu Trikha had also asked Kabir Sadanand, who played Arjun’s college friend in Deewaanapan, to shadow Dia so that she gets acquainted with a film set. The actor added, “I remember a really generous bunch of people being extremely kind, and working with a really, really indulgent producer who gave us everything we needed and more.”

After wrapping up Deewaanapan, when she went back to preparing for Om Jai Jagdish, Vashu Bhagnani offered her another film. This time, it was Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein. “And I thought to myself, ‘What’s happening to me? I haven’t even finished one film, and am about to start a third one.’ Without it being officially a three-film deal, it ended up being that. It was a lot because I was very unfamiliar with the nature of the work. I was also extremely unfamiliar with the shooting schedules. We worked long hours, and actually packed in a lot within very little time. While Vashu ji was a tremendous producer in terms of really backing what he believed in, he also worked us really hard. So, it was a little overwhelming, but also phenomenal. I don’t think any newcomer could ask for more,” said Dia.

On 25 years of Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein

Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein happened to release before Deewaanapan, but neither was a success at the box office. It’s only with time that the former gained a cult following. Despite the film’s enduring popularity, no filmmaker has managed to reunite Dia Mirza and Madhavan on screen.  “I have no idea why. It’s actually quite tragic that nobody has cast us together yet because it doesn’t have to be Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein 2. It could be any film as long as it’s a love story. I’m sure there’ll be more than enough people interested to watch us as a pair,” said Dia.

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“I’d love to work with Maddy. It’s so fascinating to grow into the people that we have. He was already such an accomplished artiste. He’s become even more accomplished. I feel my time and experience in storytelling have also helped me. It’ll be so interesting to share screen space again,” she added.

Madhavan had already established himself as a TV star with shows like Banegi Apni Baat in the 1990s, and as a Tamil lead actor with Mani Ratnam’s romantic film Alai Payuthey and Minnale before making his Bollywood debut alongside Dia.

She also addressed criticism that the film glorifies stalking through Madhavan’s character, Maddy. “The beautiful thing about the film is it evokes deep love and passion. Those who love it, defend it passionately. But there’s a very pragmatic side to the other side of the debate as well. It’s not something we should dismiss. I never have. I’ve acknowledged it, and believed we must be willing to say yes, there are nuances and areas about the story that can be perceived as problematic,” argued Dia.

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However, she points out that since the story is set in a time when there were no mobile phones, the premise of the lie, where he poses to be somebody he is not and endears himself to Reena, is acknowledged within the story. “Reena basically says, ‘Go to hell. Let alone marrying you, I refuse to see you.’ It’s later that she realises he may have presented himself as somebody he’s not, but the person she spent time with was him. He wasn’t pretending to be somebody else. He just swapped identities. So, that makes it pure in its own way,” she explained, before adding with a smile, “But it’s hard to defend a story that’s written in a different time. And I’m sure if it was written today, it’d be written very differently.”