Rani Mukerji-Saif Ali Khan kiss in Hum Tum left Aditya Chopra bemused; Kunal Kohli calls it ‘worst kiss ever’
4 min readHyderabadMay 29, 2026 02:48 PM IST Before Hum Tum became one of Hindi cinema’s most cherished love stories, the people making it were barely speaking to each other. Director Kunal Kohli’s 2004 film gave audiences Karan and Rhea, played by Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukerji, two people who kept circling each other before finally giving in. It had the warmth of a classic rom-com and the wit of something sharper. Twenty-two years on, it still holds up. What audiences never saw, though, was how close the whole thing came to falling apart behind the scenes. Kohli, in conversation with NDTV, recounted about what the early days of the shoot actually looked like. The short version: nobody was getting along with Saif in one corner, and Rani and the director in the other. “They were not particularly fond of each other off-screen. For the first half of the shoot it felt like team Rani and me, and Saif alone. Saif and I didn’t like each other and Saif and Rani didn’t like each …
