By the time Meghna Gulzar made her first film, her father and legendary poet, filmmaker, and lyricist Gulzar had already won seven National Awards. He had even retired from direction after his 1999 swansong, Hu Tu Tu, on which Meghna worked as an assistant director. Meghna’s mother and veteran actor Rakhee had also won a National Award by then, and had transitioned from a leading lady in the 1970s to a popular character artist in the 1990s and early 2000s.

When Meghna Gulzar’s career didn’t take off

Besides Hu Tu Tu, Meghna had also assisted his father on his 1996 National Award-winning period political thriller Maachis. She had also assisted veteran filmmaker Saeed Akhtar Mirza, and studied filmmaking at New York University. But those didn’t lead to her announcing her arrival with success. Her 2002 directorial debut failed at the box office despite starring two formidable leading ladies.

Filhaal, revolving around surrogacy, starred Tabu and Shilpa Shetty. Meghna followed that up with the 2007 romantic comedy Just Married, starring Fardeen Khan and Esha Deol, which also didn’t work at the box office. “I’ve had a phase in my career where my films didn’t work, and I didn’t get work for many years. That changed with Talvar,” Meghna told Bollywood Hungama in a recent interview.

Story continues below this ad

She confessed that she didn’t change anything about herself or her approach to filmmaking while helming her 2015 breakthrough. The crime thriller, inspired by the Arushi Talwar double murder case, starred late Irrfan Khan, Neeraj Kabi, Konkona Sen Sharma, and Tabu among others. “It was the story that I was telling that changed,” added Meghna.

Gulzar and Rakhee’s advice to Meghna

Meghna revealed that it was “more difficult” for her parents than it was for her to deal with her rough patch before Talvar. “They were both very successful in their own right in the same industry, and yet completely helpless because they couldn’t do anything to make me successful,” said the filmmaker. But even then, they never encouraged her to sell her soul as a storyteller.

“At that time, what they’d told me, ‘Don’t betray your own sensibility. If the work has to happen, it’ll come. You just do your work. Don’t worry about the fruits of that work. You just stay true to your part.’ I think I put it on test while I was making Talvar because I was making a film of that genre for the first time. So, I just went with my instinct, and did only what my instinct said to do. And the audience seemed to like it. Then that’s what I stayed with,” added Meghna.

After the success of Talvar, Meghna scored her maiden Rs 100 crore hit with period spy thriller Raazi, starring Alia Bhatt. She then made Chhapaak in 2020, which starred Deepika Padukone as acid attack victim Laxmi Agarwal, but that film didn’t yield desired results at the box office. Even her latest directorial, period war drama Sam Bahadur, starring Vicky Kaushal as Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw, got shortchanged by its clash with Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s 2023 blockbuster family crime drama Animal, starring Ranbir Kapoor.

Story continues below this ad

But Sam Bahadur fetched Meghna her maiden National Award for Best Feature Film Promoting National, Scoial and Environmental Values. Meghna’s next is a police procedural, Daayra, starring Kareena Kapoor and Prithviraj Sukumaran, which is slated to release in cinemas on September 18.