'Humshakals wasn't that big a flop'

'I was very rude, and made statements for the sake of making them without realising they would backfire on me someday.

'I thought people would forget after six months. But if you make statements, they will come back. Now after having tasted failure, I have realised that I must be politically correct.'

Meet the all-new Sajid Khan.

Sajid Khan will be seen on television once again.

The filmmaker is going to judge India's Best Dramebaaz, along with Sonali Bendre and Vivek Oberoi. A children's reality show, it will premiere on December 12, at 9.30 pm on ZEE TV. 

Sajid claims he has 'developed a lot of tolerance' for children, since he has dealt with his sister Farah Khan's seven-year-old triplets.

“At 44, I have become more mature," he says. "Most of the kids on the show want to have fun but some of the parents pressurise them to win. So I'm trying to ease that in my own nice way." 

Sajid claims he was a dramebaaz himself as a child. 

"My father was a filmmaker and we had a lot of money," says Sajid. "But his films flopped, and he went bankrupt. We had to shift a big house to a one-room kitchen apartment. I would follow slum kids and participate in robberies. But when I was 14, I said to myself bahut ho gaya (that's enough)."

"I decided to sell my talent," he continues. "At one of Farah’s college functions at St Xavier’s College, the sound had conked off and someone from Farah’s group pushed me on stage. I did mimicry for 20 minutes of Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth and Mithun Chakraborty, and the college kids liked it."

"That was my first exposure to college. Then I started performing at weddings.

"When I was 16 years old, I made a visiting card -- host, dost, DJ and mimicry artist Sajid Khan with care of number," he says with a laugh. "I used to earn Rs 100-250. After that, I hosted Antakshari on Zee TV."

In 2012, Sajid Khan had creative differences with his Housefull series producer Sajid Nadiadwala, and the two parted ways. The third film in the series is being directed by Entertainment directors Sajid-Wajid.

Sajid now says he regrets fighting with Sajid Nadiadwala, "I shouldn't have fought with my best friend Sajid Nadiadwala. I think he also regrets it. Nadiadwala and I are like soul brothers. He has also seen poverty the way I have," he says.

"We had been friends for 17 years, but we haven't been friends for the last two years. Now, we are back! Both of us said in a 17-year-old friendship, enmity of two years is allowed. We knew we had to come together. We have patched up; there’s no more dushmani,” Sajid says.

Sajid always came across as arrogant, thanks to his haughty statements. But then his movies like Himmatwala and Humshakals sank -- actors even disassociated themselves from the film -- and Sajid seems to have come back to earth. 

"People think I am arrogant but I don’t think so," he says. "I am basically a lower middle class person by heart. I think I was very rude, and made statements for the sake of making them -- 'Rs 100 crore kya? My film will do Rs 200 crore, it can never flop'."

“I made those statements without realising they would backfire on me someday. I thought they would forget after six months. But if you make statements, they will come back. Now after having tasted failure, I have realised that I must be politically correct," Sajid says.

But he feels the flak he received after Humshakals was unnecessary.

"I wasn’t like 'I will show everybody'. I have made fun of film industry for 20 years on television, but it was in jest. Humshakals wasn’t that big a flop. It did a business of Rs 65 crore. People were reviewing me, not my films, but that's okay. At the end of the day, your work should speak for you," he says.

Shifting gears to his personal life, Sajid says being single is a stress-buster. "I broke up last year," he says. "That's a very big stress-buster. Why do you want to push me to hell by getting me married?”

"I dated four girls at a time in college but I will never talk ill about any of them," he says. "I'll never say anything bad about a woman. If anybody asks me about my ex, I will just smile," says the television host-turned-director.

Meanwhile, Sajid is concentrating on his work.

Besides India's Best Dramebaaz, Sajid is working on an Indian adaptation of the Korean romantic-comedy My Girlfriend Is An Agent. An official remake, the shooting will start mid-year.

"It took us nine-10 months to turn it into My Boyfriend Is An Agent," he says.