Deepika Padukone reveals Farah Khan cast her in 'Om Shanti Om' without an audition: 'Never felt like I was an outsider'

Deepika Padukone recently spoke about her Bollywood debut and said she never felt like an outsider, all because of director Farah Khan. She shared this during the opening session of WAVES 2025 in Mumbai, where she joined Shah Rukh Khan for a talk titled The Journey, moderated by Karan Johar.
During the chat, Karan brought up the insider versus outsider debate in the Hindi film industry. Deepika, who entered Bollywood in 2007 with Om Shanti Om, said, “These are terms that we seem to be discussing now, insider-outsider. When I began, it was just a new world. I was a 16-17 year old girl, came from Bangalore, and Farah Khan showed interest in casting me in a movie. I was transitioning between Bangalore and Mumbai at the time. She did an audition. I remember doing a meeting with her once. She said, I wanted to meet Shah Rukh once. He was shooting for Chakde in Australia at the time. She said once he’s back, we’ll do a meeting. That was it. For me, it just happened because I was a model before that. They’d seen some of my work. But I never felt like I was an outsider trying to make my place in a new industry. I had the dedication, I had the passion, I had the determination, the hard work. Those were the things in my control. And those were the things that I applied to what I was passionate about."
Debut film
Deepika's first film, 'Om Shanti Om', made her a star and marked the start of one of the most successful careers in today's Bollywood.
Shah Rukh Khan, who also didn’t come from a film background, shared his own experience of entering the industry. He said that when he came to Mumbai, he never felt like an outsider.“Jab main yahan (Mumbai) aaya tha, I never thought ki main outsider hoon iss liye main iss duniya ka hissa nahi ban sakta… I believed this is my world… Mujhe laga yeh duniya meri hai… yeh jagah meri hai."