Shah Rukh Khan gave 'important input' for Vijay Varma's Darlings character, reveals director Jasmeet K Reen: 'It worked'

Darlings was among the most critically-acclaimed and loved films of the year. The Netflix dark comedy starred Alia Bhatt and Shefali Shah as a mother-daughter duo trying to get back at the daughter’s abusive husband Hamza, played by Vijay Varma. Hamza’s character and Vijay’s performance received special praise when the film was released. In a recent interaction, the film’s director Jasmeet K Reen revealed tha Shah Rukh Khan had a special input about Hamza, that actually worked.

Shah Rukh Khan’s production house Red Chillies Entertainment co-produced the film along with Alia’s Eternal Sunshine Productions. The film, which also starred Roshan Mathew, was released on August 5 on Netflix.

In a recent roundtable discussion hosted by Pinkvilla, Jasmeet said, “Shah Rukh had a very interesting input (for the film). He said, ‘Hamza joh hain, second half mein usko chhodna mat (Don’t let Hamza go in the second half)’.”

The director added that while they anyway did not intend to let Hamza go but after Shah Rukh’s input, they gave the character more meat. She also said he had some advice about whom to cast in the role. “Obviously, we were not going to let him go but because the humour was just coming out of him being there, tied up or cracking a line. He said ‘chhodna mat (don’t let him go). Ismein humour aa sakta hain (This can be humourous) and please cast someone who can do this.’ I think that was an important input because obviously we added a lot more Hamza after that. On a macro level, that worked,” Jasmeet said.

Darlings was Jasmeet’s directorial debut. The film received positive reviews from critics and registered over 10 million watching hours in its opening weekend, the highest for any non-English language film on the platform worldwide.