Kiran Rao calls experience of working on Aamir Khan's 'Lagaan' a nightmare, says 'Would be sitting in the make-up room, didn't even get to…'

Aamir Khan and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan was an instant classic and a global phenomenon back in 2001 when it released. The making of the film in the form of a documentary called Chale Chalo is just as pulsating as the film itself. In an interview with The Lallantop, Kiran Rao, who was an assistant director on that film, spoke about her experience and called it a nightmare.

She recalled, “My job was to somehow get all the actors from makeup, hair, wardrobe to set. And in Lagaan, we had two cricket teams, plus everybody had beards, the women wore dresses. It was a nightmare. Before reaching set at 4-4:30 am, I’d be on my walkie telling them to put the toaster on. The actor who played Elizabeth wanted toast first thing in the morning.”

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She added, “I would be sitting in the makeup room and wondering what I was doing with my Masters in Mass Communication from Jamia. But finally, everybody has to put in their hours in all these places. But you hope that one day you leave the makeup room and find a spot near the monitor. Unfortunately, I didn’t even get to see much of the shoot, I spent most of my time in the makeup room.”

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In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, the filmmaker spoke about her recently released directorial and said, “It was important for us to keep the balance of entertainment, humour as well as some thoughts that we wanted to touch upon. We put ourselves through strict test when we were writing it. First we concentrated on characters and plots and any messaging that we wanted to do through the film we kept it as a subtext. The same method we applied while editing the film. Actually, I cut the film down a lot on the edit table. The balance was very important for me both humour and emotion.”