When an old foe turns friend, you have to make doubly sure you show him the love! That’s apparently what Karan Johar is doing, even though he and Sanjay Leela Bhansali had buried the hatchet at the Piku success bash in May 2015.
The filmmaker, who had differences with fellow filmmaker Bhansali in the past, is showing yet again that he has no rancour and is able to praise a good thing when he sees it... even when it comes from a rival. The praise came ostensibly for Deepika Padukone, with SLB also coming in for his share of the back-patting. “Deepika looks stunning [in Padmavati]. That's one thing about Sanjay Leela Bhansali I love. His aesthetics are beautiful, stunning and the best. His sense of visualisation and beauty is the best we have in the country," Johar gushes.
This generous praise shows how far the duo have come since their ugly spat played out in the public realm. It had started with Bhansali pulling off a casting coup by signing on the lead pair of his mega hit, Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram Leela , for his next magnum opus, Bajirao Mastani. This had properly ticked off Karan, who had nursed the desire to unite these two stars in his then-ambitious project, Shuddhi. Speaking about it at the time in 2014, he had revealed tersely that he shared a “formal, civil and amicable equation with Sanjay, nothing beyond that.” That is why, he claimed, he didn’t need to speak to Bhansali about Shuddhi, and SLB didn’t discuss the Bajirao Mastani announcement with him either.
However, the bitterness came through, as Johar went on to add in another interview, that Bhansali had gone into a space of 'negativity and darkness'. An understandably stung Bhansali came out to declare, “I've never understood why someone, who you think is a friend, would publicly talk ill about you… I had my cast in place, so I didn't need Karan's permission. I've never had an ambition to become the most powerful man in the industry.” The taunt in that statement was tangible and the two steered clear of each other thereafter… Till they came face to face at the Piku do, where they hugged, shed a few tears and buried the past. “The bitterness is behind us now, for good,” Bhansali had beamed. And Karan is apparently making sure it stays that way!
