Amitabh Bachchan shares he, Dharmendra travelled together while shooting Sholay: ‘Saath mein baith ke cards, rummy khelte the’

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s Kaun Banega Crorepati is in its fourteenth season, and he has managed to keep the audiences hooked to the screen for years. The audiences have loved the quiz show, not only because of its interactive nature, but also because of the fun anecdotes that he shares while hosting KBC.
On Monday’s episode of KBC14, Amitabh Bachchan and contestant Dipesh Jain, a Bhopal based journal, reminisced about Ramesh Sippy’s directorial Sholay. Here, Bachchan spoke bout the beautiful bond he shared with his co-star Dharmendra while shooting the 1975 film.

Bachchan shared that he and Dharmendra would travel in the same car from the hotel to the film’s set and forged a great bond with him. “Dharam ji aur hum toh ek he gaadi mein set tak jaate the, takriban 45-50 minutes lagte the hotel se set tak pahuchne mein, saath mein baith ke cards, rummy khelte travel karte the (Dharmendra and I would travel in the same car from our hotel to the set. It was a 45-50 minutes long drive and both of us used to play a game of rummy and other card games),” Bachchan shared with Dipesh.
The bond that Bachchan shared with Dharmendra is quite rare in today’s times when actors working on the same film sets spend their free time between cuts in their separate vanity vans parked near the sets.

Bachchan also shared that it was Dharmendra’s idea to stay in a hotel near the set. He said, “Ramesh Sippy had constructed an entire village and Dharam ji was so fond of it that he would stay on the sets at night. He would say, ‘Arre ab kaun jaayega phir subah aayega, yahin rukk jaate hain subah makeup karke ready ho jaayenge’.”
Bachchan shared more memories from Sholay and how it was the first time for him to learn about safety measures that the film’s team carried out while shooting action sequences and stunts. He revealed, “We came to know for the first time about safety measures that we need to carry out while doing stunts. An international stunt director had come on set, he showed us so many equipment that were important for safety precautions. We started using stuff that kept us safe from getting hurt like elbow padding, knee padding, back padding, because these were the areas which would get hurt the most.”
It was after Sholay that Bachchan and Dharmendra learnt about safety protocols while doing stunts. He shared, “He (the stunt director) would make three layers of empty paper boxes and then tarpaulin over it and then he would ask us to jump on it, this way we would never get hurt. In today’s times actors don’t get injured much and it shouldn’t happen.”