Kareena Kapoor Khan on the failure of her films Heroine, Laal Singh Chaddha | Sit With Hitlist

Kareena Kapoor Khan in Laal Singh Chaddha

At a time when doing a Madhur Bhandarkar film almost guaranteed a win at the National Film Awards, Kareena Kapoor Khan's Heroine did nothing to up the actress' equity in the film industry. Kareena had poured her heart and soul into the film, but it wasn't successful critically or commercially.

Was she affected after the film flopped, we asked Kareena during Mid-day's print and podcast series, Sit With Hitlist. "I am such an emotional person, I am affected. So, if I am affected by something, I just show. And I think that was what happened with Heroine, because I really worked hard on the film and I wanted it to be... Everyone was winning national awards for Madhur's film and somewhere we went wrong. But I still feel that it was one of my amazing performances," she said.

"But then I had to strike that balance, like I have to do the commercial, I had to do this and I like doing that," she added.

However, Kareena is enjoying exploring various kinds of roles, now that times have changed and cinema is more evolved. "It is a different time in cinema also. With the whole OTT outbreak, there are stars from a different galaxy that have come in and they are like top level actors," she said, referring to her co-stars from the Netflix film, Jaane Jaan.

"They are playing a different game. I want to be on my toes now. We don't want to get comfortable," she added.

Speaking of debacles, last year Laal Singh Chaddha did not see success despite Aamir Khan and Kareena working really hard on it. The film had a long schedule and had to deal with the pandemic as well. Aamir himself was in Ladakh for about 6 months for the film. Did they do a post mortem, because a lot of effort went into making that movie?

"Of course, I mean Aamir was like living that character. He had become Laal. I don't know, I think maybe it was just people had… Covid had just happened and everything was slowly opening up and people maybe wanted something more energetic and fun, rather than this, which was slightly emotional and... Maybe because there were these big names attached to it, Aamir and me, maybe they wanted something more frothy coming out at this time. I think this was slightly dark.

Kareena said although she didn't meet Aamir right after the film released, she later wrote him a long message saying this doesn't affect their friendship.

"After the film I was busy. I gave birth, I had another child during Covid. There was so much going on at that time, so I never really met Aamir after the film. But then obviously after that I bumped into him at the NMACC event and I know, I saw it in his eyes that he was he was a bit apologetic, he was sad about the fact why did this happen.

"We have also done some great work together, with a big blockbuster like 3 Idiots, then Talaash… So, somewhere there was that feeling. I wrote to Advait as well as Aamir that I don't judge relationships, friendships or our talent as actors with a film that didn't work. For me Roopa will always be an iconic character which I played because she was slightly dark. And he was also worried about that. He was like, zyada dark toh nahi ho jayega character. I was like, nahi thik hai, it's fine, that arc we have to show. I told him on a long Whatsapp that don't feel that we have lost because we haven't. We made a beautiful film and our friendship and our love is not measured by box office success."