Laal Singh Chadha: Superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s brilliant cameo in India’s Forrest Gump

“One time, a young man came to our house and he had a guitar case. I liked this guitar, it played well. I started moving to the music, shaking my hips. And one evening my mother and I were shopping. And next to the furniture and hardware store, guess what… A few years later, this charming young man called the King had to sing a lot of songs, having a heart attack or something. It was hard for me to be the King.”

In 1994, Tom Hanks / Forrest Gump told how, as a child, fascinated by the love of music, he bent his hips, despite his fragile and crippled legs, to a young man who came to the boarding house with a guitar case. A young man named Elvis, who would become king a few years later and who would borrow one of his most famous dance moves from a young Forrest (Michael Conner Humphreys).

Like a box of chocolates (ported in a Gulgape box), a twirling feather, a cross-country race or a fortune in shrimp fishing (adapted…to make men’s underwear), this memorable encounter is revisited in Laal Singh Chaddha. , a Bollywood remake Forrest Gump In theaters this week. But which Indian cultural figure can be the equivalent of Elvis Presley? Actor-producer Aamir Khan, who plays the lead role, was instantly hooked on the name.

“We had to find someone who could be the Elvis Presley of India,” he explains to AlloCiné, while directing the scene himself behind the camera. “Shah Rukh Khan is the first name that came to my mind because he is a huge star in India. He is a very popular icon in my country. We are very lucky that he has agreed to be part of our film.”

In Laal Singh ChadhaHence, it is the legend Shah Rukh Khan who crosses paths with Laal on a New Delhi rooftop in the late 1970s. While the young boy goes to visit his cousins, he dances despite his braces and the group’s taunts. Around him: Mesmerized by his moves, a teenager named Shah Rukh asked him to teach him what would later become his “signature move” in his biggest hits in Bollywood.

This news should certainly make Indian cinema fans and those in general happy Shah Rukh Khan especially. Indeed, digitally rejuvenated, the actor plays a cameo for the duration of the sequence, before his best dance scenes complete the Laal flashback. Therefore, it is understandable why a special thanks to Shah Rukh Khan opens Laal Singh Chadha. The actor, who in the mid-90s while developing the first remake project, almost played Laal himself. The circle is complete.

Laal Singh Chadha in behind the scenes songs