Tej Sapru Recalls Rajesh Khanna’s Apology After On-Set Clash: ‘I Have Never Seen a More Generous Man’

Veteran actor Tej Sapru has offered a strikingly complicated portrait of Rajesh Khanna — one that doesn't comfortably fit either the legend of Hindi cinema's first superstar or the stories about the temperament that accompanied his extraordinary fame.

In a recent conversation on The Rediff Podcast, Sapru recalled being deeply hurt after Khanna verbally abused him while they were working together. Yet his memory of the late actor did not end with that confrontation.

Khanna approached him the following day, tried to make peace and invited him back to his hotel. The two ultimately spent the night eating, drinking and talking together.

That is why Sapru's assessment of Khanna contains two seemingly contradictory observations: he believes the superstar became arrogant at the height of his success, but he also says he had rarely encountered someone as generous.

Tej Sapru says Rajesh Khanna changed at the height of fame

Speaking to Rediff's Patcy N, Sapru reflected on what enormous success can do to an actor and the people surrounding them.

His assessment was direct:

“Rajesh Khanna had arrogance.”

But Sapru immediately added context, arguing that such behaviour can emerge when somebody reaches the peak of a career and is surrounded by people affected by that success.

His description was not entirely critical. In the same recollection, Sapru said he had “never seen a more generous man than him.” 

That second observation is essential to understanding the interview.

Sapru was not simply attacking a late colleague decades after they worked together. He was describing someone he believed contained sharply different sides.

What happened between Rajesh Khanna and Tej Sapru?

Sapru then recalled an incident from a film shoot in Kashmir.

According to his account, he suddenly heard somebody verbally abusing him from behind and realised it was Rajesh Khanna.

Sapru did not identify a clear reason for the outburst. He said the incident particularly upset him because he had always treated Khanna with enormous respect as a senior actor.

There was also a family connection behind that respect.

Sapru's father, veteran actor D.K. Sapru, had worked with Khanna early in the superstar's career. D.K. Sapru appeared with Rajesh Khanna in the 1967 film Raaz, playing Sarkar Nath opposite Khanna's Kumar/Sunil.

Sapru explained that he traditionally showed considerable deference to senior actors and particularly to artists who had worked with his father.

That made Khanna's behaviour difficult for him to understand.

The next day, Sapru refused to greet him

The disagreement could easily have become the end of their cordial relationship.

Instead, the following day changed the story.

Sapru recalled that the unit was shooting a chase sequence in the snow. Still hurt by the previous encounter, he deliberately did not greet Khanna.

It was an unusual act for him precisely because of the respect he normally showed the senior star.

Khanna noticed.

After the shot, according to Sapru, the superstar approached him and attempted to put the confrontation behind them, addressing him as “tall boy.” 

Sapru did not simply accept it without explanation. He told Khanna that he had been abused without reason.

Khanna then invited him to his hotel.

An ugly confrontation ended with a night together

Sapru accepted the invitation after the day's work was completed.

What followed is arguably the most revealing part of his story.

Instead of allowing the disagreement to grow, the two actors spent the night together eating and drinking. Sapru interpreted Khanna's behaviour as recognition that he had been wrong.

The episode therefore becomes more complicated than a headline about one star abusing another.

Khanna lost his temper.

Sapru was hurt.

Sapru then openly demonstrated that he was upset.

Khanna approached him.

And the two reconciled.

That sequence is important because removing the reconciliation fundamentally changes the character of Sapru's recollection.

Sapru continued meeting Rajesh Khanna during his career slowdown

Perhaps the strongest evidence that the incident did not permanently destroy their relationship is what Sapru says happened years later.

He recalled continuing to visit Khanna after the superstar's career had slowed. According to Sapru, Khanna had an office in Khar and he would meet him roughly once every ten days when possible.

That detail adds considerably more weight to Sapru's description of Khanna as a contradictory personality.

If the Kashmir confrontation had defined their relationship, there would have been little reason for Sapru to continue seeking him out later.

Instead, his memories combine hurt, admiration, criticism and affection.

Did arrogance really cause Rajesh Khanna’s career decline?

This part requires more careful treatment.

Sapru believes it contributed.

In the Rediff conversation, he suggested that Khanna's career declined earlier partly because of his arrogance. He contrasted the actor with contemporaries Dharmendra and Jeetendra and framed the conclusion explicitly as his own assessment.

The Celebrity Hour should preserve that distinction.

It would be misleading to write:

“Rajesh Khanna's arrogance caused his downfall.”

A more accurate formulation is:

“Tej Sapru believes Rajesh Khanna's arrogance contributed to his career decline.”

The first presents a complicated piece of film history as an established causal fact.

The second accurately reports the opinion of someone who knew and worked around him.

A superstar's career trajectory can involve changing audience tastes, new competitors, film selection, commercial failures and broader shifts within an industry. Sapru's personal assessment is valuable testimony, but it is not definitive proof of why Khanna's extraordinary run eventually slowed.

Sapru still considers Rajesh Khanna’s stardom unmatched

That nuance becomes even clearer when Sapru talks about Khanna's popularity.

Despite criticising aspects of his personality, he remained emphatic about the scale of the actor's stardom.

Sapru said he had never seen another star command the kind of following Khanna enjoyed.

This is why his interview is more interesting when read as a whole rather than reduced to the word “arrogant.”

Sapru simultaneously argues that Khanna could be difficult, extraordinarily generous and almost unmatched as a star.

Those observations aren't mutually exclusive.

They are his memories of different aspects of the same man.

The D.K. Sapru connection adds another layer

Sapru's reference to his father also deserves context because it explains why the confrontation affected him so deeply.

D.K. Sapru was an established character actor whose long career included Pakeezah and Deewaar. He also appeared alongside the young Rajesh Khanna in Raaz.

Khanna himself later recalled Raaz as the film that gave him his first break as a leading actor, even though Aakhri Khat reached cinemas first.

For Tej, then, Rajesh Khanna was not simply another famous co-star.

He belonged to a generation professionally connected to his father.

That history helps explain why an apparently brief insult stayed vivid enough for Sapru to recount decades later — and why Khanna making amends mattered too.

The Celebrity Hour Take

The easiest version of this story is:

Rajesh Khanna was arrogant and abused Tej Sapru.

It is also the least interesting version.

Sapru's complete recollection presents something much more human.

A superstar at the absolute height of fame could behave badly.

A younger colleague could refuse to quietly accept it.

The superstar could realise the relationship had been damaged and make an effort to repair it.

And decades later, the colleague could remember both the insult and the generosity.

That complexity is what makes oral histories from veteran actors valuable.

They do not necessarily provide objective verdicts on people or periods. Memory is personal, and Sapru's theory about Khanna's career decline should be understood precisely that way.

But first-hand recollections can reveal something that box-office records and filmographies cannot: what working around enormous stardom actually felt like.

Sapru's story is particularly revealing because he doesn't flatten Khanna into either a hero or a villain.

He criticises him.

He defends him.

He remembers being hurt by him.

He remembers continuing to visit him.

And he still considers the scale of Khanna's stardom exceptional.

Perhaps the most responsible way to report the anecdote, then, is not to decide which version of Rajesh Khanna was “real.”

According to Tej Sapru, both were.

Sources & Verification

This report was prepared primarily from Rediff's August 6 publication of The Rediff Podcast featuring Tej Sapru, with Patcy N credited for the interview. Rediff directly highlights Sapru's recollection that Khanna's arrogance contributed to his decline, that the actor spoke badly to him and later apologised. Contemporary coverage from The Indian Express, NDTV and The Times of India was cross-checked for the fuller account of the Kashmir incident and reconciliation.