Rajkumar Santoshi’s 2004 neo-noir action thriller ‘Khakee’ features one of the most memorable twists in Hindi cinema of the millennium. The film takes audiences by surprise when Aishwarya Rai’s character, Mahalakshmi, betrays her police colleagues and chooses to side with her lover, Ajay Devgn’s Yashwant Angre. Interestingly, Santoshi has now revealed that he deliberately kept Aishwarya unaware of her character’s complete arc for a major part of the shoot.Although Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was “a very good family friend” of the filmmaker, Santoshi admitted that he initially chose not to disclose the full trajectory of her character in ‘Khakee’.Santoshi explained that negative characters are generally given a backstory to justify their actions. “Whenever a lead character is portraying a negative role, they always have a backstory justifying them. Like their mother was cruel.” However, he deliberately took a different approach with Mahalakshmi. “There’s no justification. She (Aishwarya’s character Mahalakshmi) is bad. Period,” he said in an interview with Galatta Plus.Santoshi further revealed that even Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn and Akshay Kumar were kept in the dark about Mahalakshmi’s real intentions until the shoot was already halfway through.“Halfway through the shoot, I had a narration of that with Amit ji (Amitabh Bachchan), Ajay, and Akshay (Kumar). That time, I told them about her arc. They were shocked! ‘How did Aishwarya agree to do this role?’ I said, ‘She doesn’t know. I didn’t tell her.’ They were like, ‘What nonsense! The film would get shelved! Aishwarya would refuse to do the film.”Despite their concerns, Santoshi was convinced that Aishwarya would still commit to the project once she learned about the twist. His opportunity to reveal the entire arc came after the actress injured her leg in an accident on the sets. The filmmaker visited her at her parents’ residence, where he finally narrated the complete story in front of her family.“I met her parents, who are very nice people. They like me a lot. So, I narrated the film in front of everyone. That time, I told her the whole arc in front of her parents,” recalled Santoshi.Rather than objecting to the unexpected turn, Aishwarya’s parents reportedly found the idea “interesting” and “different”, especially considering the kind of roles heroines were usually offered in the early 2000s.“I told her, ‘Why I didn’t tell you initially is because I felt it’d stay in your mind subconsciously and you’d give it away.’ It was such a big shocking point that nobody could’ve expected it. Even she didn’t know she’d betray the team because she always thought she’s a part of the team,” Santoshi explained.Aishwarya eventually embraced the role and went ahead with ‘Khakee’, with Mahalakshmi’s betrayal becoming arguably the film’s biggest surprise.Co-written by Rajkumar Santoshi and Shridhar Raghavan, ‘Khakee’ follows a police team tasked with transporting an accused terrorist, played by Atul Kulkarni, from a small town in Maharashtra to Mumbai.The team is led by DCP Anant Kumar Shrivastav (Amitabh Bachchan) and includes Senior Inspector Shekhar Varma (Akshay Kumar), former inspector Yashwant Angare (Ajay Devgn) and Sub Inspector Ashwin Gupte (Tusshar Kapoor), among others. The film also featured Jaya Prada, Prakash Raj, Tanuja and Ashwini Kalsekar, while Lara Dutta made a guest appearance in the popular song “Aisa Jadoo.”