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‘You Had To Eat Duggu Up’: Rajat Bedi Reveals ‘Heartbreaking’ Moment That ‘Still Stings’ from ‘Koi… Mil Gaya’ Shoot

For millions of Bollywood fans, the 2003 blockbuster Koi… Mil Gaya remains a cherished, landmark film. It cemented Hrithik Roshan’s status as a bona fide superstar and is celebrated for its blend of sci-fi, emotion, and iconic music. However, for actor Rajat Bedi, who delivered a memorable performance as the film’s suave and menacing antagonist, Raj Saxena, the film is a source of complex and “heartbreaking” professional regrets that, he admits, still sting over two decades later.

While the film was one of the biggest of his career, it did not open the doors he had hoped for. This disappointment eventually led him to step away from the limelight and relocate to Canada, where he ventured into real estate.
This isn’t the first time Bedi has expressed disillusionment with his Koi… Mil Gaya experience. He has been vocal in the past about the profound hurt he felt after the film’s release.

Despite playing the primary villain, Bedi found himself completely erased from the film’s extensive promotional campaigns. He was conspicuously absent from posters and the widespread publicity, an experience he described as feeling “sidelined” and “left out.” While he has since clarified that there was no major “fallout” with filmmaker Rakesh Roshan over this exclusion, these long-held feelings of being professionally overlooked provide a crucial context for his latest, more personal revelation about a missed opportunity on set.

In a recent, candid interview with News18 Showsha, Bedi opened up about a specific incident during the shoot that he believes was a pivotal, fumbled moment in his acting career. He squarely blames his own lack of “maturity” as an actor at the time for failing to seize a crucial scene. “I wasn’t a mature actor back then, even when I was doing Koi… Mil Gaya,” Rajat recalled, setting the stage for his painful memory. “There was this one scene that Rakesh ji wanted me to do, it was my scene. When I say that, I mean it was a scene between me and Duggu (Hrithik Roshan) where my lines could’ve overpowered his.”

Bedi detailed how Rakesh Roshan, sensing the potential in the scene, pushed him to try different deliveries and suggested changes. After several takes, the director eventually okayed the shot, but the conversation that followed is what left Bedi “heartbroken.” He vividly recalls Rakesh Roshan telling him, “‘Rajat, tujhe pata hai woh scene tera tha? (Rajat, you know, that scene was yours)? You had to eat Duggu up in that scene! But you didn’t do that.'”
This frank feedback from the veteran director, intended to be instructive, landed as a devastating blow. “That episode still hits me hard,” Bedi confessed. “I was heartbroken that day. I didn’t have the maturity to understand it then.” This missed chance to truly own a scene opposite the film’s lead, coupled with the subsequent feeling of being erased from the film’s marketing, compounded his disillusionment with the industry.

Bedi suggests that this on-set failure and the promotional snubs were contributing factors to his eventual decision to leave the country. However, in a poignant twist, Bedi now views those challenging years away from the camera—filled with a lack of work, personal dilemmas, and the struggle of building a new career—as the very crucible that forged him into the actor he wishes he could have been back in 2To03. He believes these life experiences have given him a depth and grounding he previously lacked. He is confident that he can “emote much better today” precisely because of the hardships he endured after leaving the industry.

Now, Rajat Bedi is channeling that hard-won maturity into a comeback. He is set to appear in The Ba***ds of Bollywood, the highly anticipated directorial debut of Aryan Khan. In a striking case of life imitating art, Bedi has been cast as a forgotten actor struggling to find work after 15 years—a role he admits felt achingly “close to home.” This new phase has also given him a fresh perspective and a renewed creative spark, which he credits to working with the current generation of talent, suchas co-star Raghav Juyal, whom he praises as reminiscent of the legendary Govinda.

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