When Rani Mukherji replaced Nadia Jamil in Yash Chopra’s ‘Veer Zaara’

Actor Nadia Jamil recently made headlines for successfully battling cancer. The Damsa star is amongst the finest actors of her generation and her talent caught legendary Bollywood director, Yash Chopra’s attention.

The Chandni director offered Rani Mukherji’s role in Veer Zaara to Nadia initially.

He envisioned the project initially with Aishwarya Rai as Zaara, Nadia Jamil as Saamiya and Shah Rukh Khan as Veer.

Nadia revealed on Samina Peerzada’s show  that she was in talks for the film with Yash Chopra but couldn’t do the film as she had to take care of her child. The talks even went on till her son became 2 months of age.

The Behadd star said that she still stands by her decision of not doing the film despite the role being very pivotal and strong in the narrative. The role was that of a Pakistani lawyer who helps the protagonist with his case.  Although, she lost out on the film but made lifelong friendship with Yash Chopra and his family. She holds them very dear to herself.

She also mentioned that she couldn’t work as much as she would have wanted as an artist in her career because of her health issues since she was battling multiple diseases.

The film released on Diwali 2004 with a stellar star-cast of Shah Rukh, Preity Zinta and Rani Mukherjee and was a record success.