When Rekha claimed Jaya Bachchan cried after watching her ‘love scenes’ with Amitabh Bachchan: ‘Tears pouring down her face’

Decades have passed since the gossip about the alleged affair of Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan, which apparently happened in the 1970s, came to light and while Big B has stayed mum about the subject, Rekha has addressed the situation in many of her interviews. In a rather controversial interview that she gave in 1978, Rekha claimed that she saw Amitabh’s wife, actor Jaya Bachchan, break down as she watched Prakash Mehra’s film Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. This 1978 film was one of the last collaborations between Jaya and Amitabh, who did not work together again until Yash Chopra brought them back together pulling a massive casting coup in 1981’s Silsila.
The 1978 interview with Stardust had Rekha claiming that she saw the Bachchan family watching Muqaddar Ka Sikandar through a projection room. “Once, I was looking at the whole (Bachchan) family through the projection room when they came to see the trial show of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. Jaya was sitting in the front row and he (Amitabh) and his parents were in the row behind her. They couldn’t see her as clearly as I could. And during our love scenes, I could see tears pouring down her face,” she reportedly said.

Rekha continued that a week after that trial show, Rekha was told many of her industry colleagues that Amitabh was not going to work with her any longer. “A week later, everybody in the industry was telling me that he has made it clear to his producers that he was not going to work with me,’ she said.
There were many rumours that this had caused a rift between Jaya and Rekha as they had been friends earlier. In an interview with Simi Garewal in the 1990s, Rekha denied that there was ever any rift between the duo. She said, “Didibhai (Jaya) is much more mature, much more together.” She continued, “I’ve yet to come across a woman who is so together. She’s got so much dignity, so much class. She’s got a lot of strength. I admire that woman. We had an association before the so-called rumours and the media messed up the whole image. We were living in the same building and we had a relationship. She was my Didibhai, she still is – no matter what happens nobody can take that away. Thank God she realises that too. Whenever we meet she’s very sweet – she’s not just civil, she’s just herself.”