When Farhan Akhtar was casting for his iconic debut film Dil Chahta Hai, the journey wasn’t smooth—many actors turned him down. But things began to shift when he met Akshaye Khanna, who immediately showed faith in the script.

Speaking at the recently concluded Waves Summit, Farhan revealed that Akshaye Khanna was the first actor to sign on and was initially cast as Aakash—the role later made famous by Aamir Khan. Interestingly, when Farhan approached Aamir, it was for the role of Sid (which eventually went to Akshaye), but Aamir had other ideas.

Calling Akshaye “an incredible guy with a lot of integrity,” Farhan recalled, “I never thought Aamir would say yes so I didn’t even go to him initially. It sounds patronising in hindsight, but I just didn’t think he’d be interested. Eventually, I had no choice and decided to meet him anyway.”

To Farhan’s surprise, Aamir liked the script—but he had conditions. At the time, the dialogues were written in English. “He told me to rewrite the dialogue draft in Hindi because he wanted to see if the humour worked in that language. He also said, ‘If I like the Hindi version, I don’t want to play Sid. I want to play Aakash.’”

Farhan reworked the script and Aamir was on board. But that led to a new dilemma: how to break the news to Akshaye. Aamir, however, was confident Akshaye would understand.

“I met Akshaye and told him, ‘Aamir is very keen to do the film but he wants to play Aakash.’ Akshaye just said, ‘You came to me for Aakash. If now you want me to play Sid, I don’t care. I just want to be part of this movie.’” Farhan added, “I’ll always be indebted to him for being so gracious.”

Dil Chahta Hai, which redefined friendship in Bollywood, also starred Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, and Preity Zinta.