'You'll never think Kareena is cheap'

Another very surprising pick was Kareena Kapoor to reprise Helen's role...

Farhan: I don't think that is too out of the box, really. For me, when I was thinking back to that part, Kamini -- not the character itself, so much as Helenji playing that character (right)-� what struck me is that here is someone who carried it all off with such grace.

Today, if ninety per cent of the actresses dressed the way she had in that song, with those green contact lenses and blond hair and the very short skirt slit all the way up to here, they would look extremely vulgar and extremely tacky. But she had the ability to wear whatever you put her into and still look sophisticated, dignified; she had that innate sense of dignity about her.

Kareena has that same quality. Maybe because of the family that she comes from, maybe because of a certain innate sophistication she has, maybe also because she is relatively under-exposed -- in the sense that you don't see her everywhere, she is not that public, she has a private side to her that we don't know about, that she does not share -- maybe because of all this, she has the knack of being able to carry off almost anything without ever looking vulgar.

So that was the thing that I found common between the two, the reason why I thought she would be right for the role. Because regardless of what she would be doing in that room -- seducing Shah Rukh, jumping all over him -- somehow you will never associate it with vulgarity, you will never think she is cheap, so that was the thought process behind that casting.