Junaid Khan’s Maharaj and Laapataa Ladies Are Connected Shares Sneha Desai

Prolific writer Sneha Desai shares an interesting connection between Laapataa Ladies and Aamir Khan’s son Junaid Khan’s debut movie Maharaj.

Sneha Desai was interacting with the media during a promotional gig in Mumbai. After penning the screenplay and dialogues of Laapataa Ladies, writer Sneha is busy writing dialogues for Maharaj, debut movie of Junaid Khan.

Talking about getting on-board Maharaj, Sneha narrated an interesting story, she said, “Siddharth Malhotra, the director and producer, who made the film Hichki and We Are family, his mother-in-law, she is a Gujarati, and she would regularly come to watch my plays. And it is my guess that she told Siddharth that there is a girl who writes good stuff, so don’t you use her for one of your projects.”

“At the time nothing transpired, but after a couple of years, I got a call from him and he said, I am developing a film and I need someone to work on the dialect, because the film is in Gujarati space, so I said yes, I would love to do it. And that is how I entered the world of Maharaj” added Sneha.

“Maharaj is a film which is produced by Yash Raj, it is a period film, set in 1832, it is about Vaishnav community, it is about Gujarati community. I entered the film only for dialect, but I ended up doing associated screenplay and dialogues for the film eventually. That is the film that I went to narrate to Junaid Khan, who is Aamir Khan’s son. It was supposed to be his debut film, so Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao, both sat down for the narration. They liked the work, and Junaid signed the movie, and then lock-down happened and the movie didn’t move forward, and during the lockdown I was offered "Laapataa Ladies” , added Sneha.

Maharaj marks the debut of Junaid Khan, who stars alongside Jaideep Ahlawat, Sharvari and Shalini Pandey, and is directed by Siddharth P Malhotra.

Maharaj will be released on Netflix in 2024.