Irrfan Khan’s health deteriorated while shooting Angrezi Medium, was in immense pain, reveals costume designer

Costume designer Smriti Chauhan revealed that late actor Irrfan Khan's health deteriorated while shooting for Angrezi Medium.

Actor Irrfan Khan was last seen in Homi Adajania’s Angrezi Medium, which was released just days before his death in 2020. Now, costume designer Smriti Chauhan has revealed that the actor was in terrible pain while shooting his final film, adding that his health deteriorated while filming the project.

Directed by Homi Adajania, Angrezi Medium also featured Radhika Madan along with Irrfan Khan.

She recalled that Irrfan would visibly “shrink” as the shoot progressed, and filming had to be cancelled on some days as he was unable to work due to the severe pain.

Irrfan struggled with pain on Angrezi Medium

Costume designer Smriti Chauhan looked back at working with Irrfan on Angrezi Medium in the latest episode of Unfolding Talents (UT) on Digital Commentary channel on YouTube. Smriti recalled noticing that he was growing visibly weaker as the shoot progressed.

Smriti said, “He was in a lot of pain when we were shooting Angrezi Medium. He only told me one thing, ‘Smriti, I get very cold’, so he told me about this one brand in London, and he said that please get me warmers from there and I said sure. During the shoot of the film also he kept shrinking. We had to add a lot of padding to his clothes in that phase. Even though we gave him a lot of layers, we still had to add a lot of padding.”

She shared that on several days, the shoot had to be called off as Irrfan was unable to work and struggled to cope.

Smriti added, “In the film, we gave him a vest to wear for all the summer sequences, and even that had padding. He was ailing. His family was around him most of the time and sometimes, during the shoot, he would take a break because he was not able to cope with it… There have been days on Angrezi Medium when we couldn’t shoot because he couldn’t reach the set despite trying. He was in that much pain and I think he believed that this is what I live for and I, probably, want to just die doing this and I think he did that.”

Directed by Homi Adajania, Angrezi Medium also featured Radhika Madan, Kareena Kapoor, Deepak Dobriyal, and Ranvir Shorey. The film is a sequel of the 2017 film, Hindi Medium.

About Irrfan Khan

After appearing in several television programmes, Irrfan made his screen debut in the Academy Award nominated 1988 film, Salaam Bombay!, directed by Mira Nair. His fortunes turned when he appeared in the lead role in director Asif Kapadia’s 2001 drama, The Warrior. He went on to show his range as an actor in projects such as Maqbool, Haider, Piku and The Lunchbox. Besides earning a name for his work in the Hindi film industry, Irrfan also carved a special place for himself globally with projects such as Life of Pi, The Amazing Spider-Man, Inferno, among others.

In 2018, the actor announced to the world that he’d been diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour. “I hope to be back with more stories to tell,” he’d written in a social media post back then. He died in 2020 after a long battle with the disease. He was last seen in comedy drama Angrezi Medium, a sequel to his 2017 blockbuster Hindi Medium. Irrfan is survived by his wife Sutapa Sikdar and two have two sons: Babil and Ayan.