Sharan Sharma on 'Mr and Mrs Mahi' and 'Abhimaan' Comparisons: 'I Had Not Watched It...' | Exclusive

‘Mr and Mrs Mahi’ released a few weeks ago and a section of critics pointed out that the film shares similarities with Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan starrer ‘Abhimaan’. Much like the 1973 film, wherein Jaya Bachchan’s character becomes more successful than her husband, sparking jealousy from him, Rajkummar too gets insecure of Janhvi’s growth as a cricketer in ‘Mr and Mrs Mahi’. In an exclusive interview with News18 Showsha, director Sharan Sharma confessed that he had not watched ‘Abhimaan’ when he sat down to write ‘Mr and Mrs Mahi’.

“It was a coincidence, I will give you an honest answer. After we developed the film and we were doing our initial narration, I was told, ‘You should check out a movie called Abhimaan. You will get some idea’ I had not seen it (before writing Mr & Mrs Mahi). Then I watched it. It was not a reference point at the time of writing, to be honest. Having said that, what we are trying to do in this film is still different because the motivations of the characters are coming from a different headspace,” he told us.

“The first idea we had was that very often when a girl gets married in India, maybe she gets married into a family where after marriage, they are not allowed to work. The ideology still exists. But what if a woman gets married into a family where the husband gives you wings? So the starting point of the idea for the film came from this. But as got deeper into the writing process, we got interested in those,” Sharan Sharma added.

He said that the writing team were intrigued by the idea of telling the story of the support system. “Very often when you do a story on an achiever, you focus on the achiever, and the support system becomes the supporting character. But we thought it would be fun if we focused on the supporting character and it would be even more fun if the motivations for that supporting character were gray. It was these observations that Nikhil (co-writer Nikhil Mehrotra), Karan (Johar), and I were trying to explore,” Sharan explained.

‘Mr and Mrs Mahi’ is currently running in theatres and has collected Rs 30 crores so far.