It’s long been rumoured that Esha Gupta had a major fallout with filmmaker Sajid Khan during the shooting of Humshakals. Now, in a candid conversation with Siddharth Kannan, the actress has finally opened up about what actually went wrong between them, both personally and professionally. Recalling the experience, Esha admitted she had no idea things would turn so bad, both the film and her equation with Sajid. But during the filming, things started going wrong. “Vibes eventually set par kharaab ho chuke the (The vibe on set had turned negative).”
Esha recounted a serious altercation between her and the director, saying, “I had a fight. Sajid Khan and I were not at all on the same page, and we ended up having a proper fight. It happened once, and after that, things were never the same. See, I don’t like people abusing me. You should always treat people the way you want them to treat you. It’s that simple. Unhone mujhe gaali di… phir maine bhi di (He abused me, and in return, I also abused him).” When asked what led to that confrontation, she responded, “Kuch log baat karne se pehle sochte nahi hai… frustrated hote hai (Some people don’t think before they speak… they’re frustrated for many reasons). I don’t want to talk about that because I’ve moved on from it.”
‘I walked out of Humshakals set’
Despite the clash, Esha Gupta clarified that their professional commitments didn’t suffer. However, she recalled walking out of the set after the verbal abuse. “I walked out of the set. I went home. I didn’t stay. I had also made up my mind to exit the film. But it was the producer who apologized first, even before Sajid did.” Esha also remembered the cast’s reaction during the film’s screening. When all of them watched the film for the first time, they knew it was going to be a huge disaster.
Bipasha Basu, Ram Kapoor, Sajid Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Tamannaah Bhatia, Esha Gupta and Riteish Deshmukh pose during a promotional event for Humshakals.
Addressing the #MeToo allegations that surfaced against Sajid Khan years later, Esha Gupta clarified she was never a victim of that kind of misconduct. “No, that way I’ll give him credit. That’s why one newspaper, very early on, had wrongly added my name to Sajid Khan’s dating history, and I made sure they apologized to me for that,” she said.
The actor added, “I’ve never said anything in relation to MeToo about Sajid. In fact, when those allegations started coming out, someone even added my name to the list of people who accused him. I said, ‘No.’ Dekhiye, jahan jisne jo galti ki hai woh bolo (Look, whoever has made a mistake, call them out for that). Like I’m openly saying now that he abused me. But Sajid never tried any of those [sexual misconduct] things with me. So I will not say that about him.”
