Everyone knows Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai’s love story in Bollywood, and how tragically it ended. But very few people know that Salman tried his best to make things right when things weren’t going well with the actress. He used to visit Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas set and spend nights lying intoxicated on the floor of Aishwarya’s trailer.
Salman even did a scene with Aishwarya in Devdas. The film starred stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, and Aishwarya Rai in lead roles. According to Anupama Chopra’s book, “King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema,” there is a scene in the film where Aishwarya’s character Paro steps on a thorn, and Devdas, played by Shah Rukh, has to remove it.
During the shooting of this scene, Salman was present on the sets and he volunteered to do it. Even Shah Rukh was okay with it, and the scene was shot with Salman’s hand in the final cut instead of SRK’s.
Anupama wrote in her book, “During the making of ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam,’ she (Aishwarya) had fallen in love with her co-star, Salman Khan. For two years, Aishwarya and Salman had conducted a tempestuous affair in a fishbowl (there were rumours of parental disapproval, physical abuse, intimidation), and by the time ‘Devdas’ was shot, the relationship had disintegrated into an unpleasant, incoherent mess. Salman had become a real-life Devdas, simultaneously self-destructing and attempting to salvage his romance. He was as much a part of the Devdas shoot as the crew.”
Anupama further added, “Salman would spend nights lying intoxicated on the floor of Aishwarya’s trailer. One night, Shah Rukh and Aishwarya were doing a romantic scene that required Shah Rukh to extricate a thorn from her foot. Salman was on the set, and he volunteered to demonstrate how this should be done. Shah Rukh agreed, and as Salman did the shot, Sanjay rolled the cameras. It was a poignant moment: a spent, tragic lover enacting his own life for film. Aishwarya cried. It was the last time the two were captured on film together.”