Shilpa Shetty and Raveena Tandon rejected Chaiyya Chaiyya. Then it made Malaika Arora a star

Speaking at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, Farah Khan revealed that both Shilpa Shetty and Raveena Tandon refused Chaiyya Chaiyya, after which the song went to Malaika Arora and it made her an overnight star.

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Shilpa Shetty and Raveena Tandon rejected Chaiyya Chaiyya. Then it made Malaika Arora a star
The iconic song from Dil Se was originally offered to Shilpa Shetty and Raveena Tandon.

Choreographer-filmmaker Farah Khan was recently at the Internation Film Festival Of India (IFFI) in Goa, and spoke about her journey as a choreographer and then as a director during a session at the ongoing film festival.

She spoke at length about the iconic song Chaiyya Chaiyya from the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Dil Se, and shared anecdotes about the difficulties the team had to face during the shoot.

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"We couldn't get the permission to shoot at the station, so we managed to shoot it on top of a train. We did it in four days and no one fell," she quipped.

The video featured Malaika Arora along with Shah Rukh.

"We had approached Shilpa (Shetty) to Raveena (Tandon), a lot of actors but no one did it. Malaika did the song and became a star after that," said the choreographer, who is "fed up of remixes".

"I don't know why they are making them. It's a call the music company has taken. They say they do very well. Obviously it makes people nostalgic. A retro song, you will always enjoy. A new song takes longer to grow," said Farah, who recently choreographed the recreated version of Govinda and Raveena Tandon's iconic song, Ankhiyon Se Goli Maare.

Farah also added that making Hollywood star Tom Cruise dance has been her dream.

"I definitely want to make Tom Cruise dance. That's been a dream," she said here on Wednesday.

A dance song with the Hollywood star might still be a dream but in Bollywood, she gathered almost every star in her song Deewangi Deewangi from one of her directorial ventures, Om Shanti Om, also starring Shah Rukh Khan. There were still some who couldn't make it.

"I wanted Aamir (Khan) in it. I wanted one shot to have the three Khans together. Aamir drove me crazy for ten days. He couldn't make it because he was editing Taare Zameen Par," she recalled.

Four years later, he told her that he didn't want to do the song.

She also wanted Dilip Kumar in the video of the song and added that Shah Rukh Khan was supposed to help her in bringing the veteran actor on board. But it didn't work out.

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