As Saif Ali Khan gears up for his Netflix cop drama ‘Kartavya’, the actor has looked back at the unlikely beginning of his police uniform journey, a 1994 comedy that lifted wholesale from a Hollywood film, and a director who told him he’d never pull off a serious cop role. But the journey between those two points, as Saif recently revealed in a candid conversation, is anything but a straight line. It involves a blatantly copied Hollywood film, a blunt director, years of self-doubt and at the very start of it all, a runaway horse and Sunil Dutt riding to the rescue.

Saif Ali Khan opens up on ‘Main Khiladi Tu Anari‘

Before ‘Sacred Games’ and ‘Kartavya’, there was ‘Main Khiladi Tu Anari’, the 1994 comedy in which Saif Ali Khan first donned a police uniform. Except, as he explains it, he was not really playing a cop.Speaking to Dainik Jagran, Khan said, “The first time I wore a police uniform was in the ’90s in a comedy film. I was playing an actor who had to portray a cop. So, he studies under Akshay Kumar, who was playing a cop in the film. It was a fun movie, which we copied from an American film without taking any rights. We just lifted and copied the American film The Hard Way.”For context, ‘Main Khiladi Tu Anari’, directed by Sameer Malkan, drew heavily from the 1991 Michael J. Fox and James Woods buddy-comedy ‘The Hard Way’, in which an actor shadows a detective for a role. The Hindi version transplanted the premise with Akshay Kumar as the no-nonsense cop and Saif as the film star learning the ropes. It was a box office hit and remains fondly remembered, even if its source material was never formally credited.

Director’s blunt advice that haunted Saif Ali Khan

What stuck with Saif from that film was not the box office numbers, but what his director told him off camera.“My director told me, ‘Never play a cop. It’s a very serious thing to do. Big stars with a lot of presence play cops. You do romantic comedies, don’t play a cop,’” Khan revealed.This comment lodged itself in Khan’s psyche and stayed there for years, quietly colouring every subsequent police role he took on.“That fear always remained. Later, when I started playing cops, I think until Sacred Games, I always felt maybe I couldn’t pull it off. I’ve grown up in this business. I’ve spent more of my life on camera than off it. People have watched me from my 20s till 55, for better or worse. Hopefully, there have been some changes. I’ve grown up, and the fact that I can now play a cop is huge for me because that director used to laugh at me and say, ‘Never do it,’” Khan stated.The irony is that ‘Sacred Games’, the 2018 Netflix series in which Saif played Mumbai police officer Sartaj Singh became one of the defining performances of his career. The role reset audience perception of him entirely, earning him critical acclaim that felt genuinely hard-won after decades in the industry.

About ‘Kartavya’

‘Kartavya’ arrives on Netflix on May 15 and marks Saif’s return to the police uniform in a markedly different register from Sacred Games. Directed by Pulkit and produced by Gauri Khan under the Red Chillies Entertainment banner, the film follows a cop navigating the grinding tension between duty, conscience, and the personal cost of every decision he makes set against a taut investigative backdrop that explores themes of justice, morality, and consequence.The ensemble cast includes Rasika Dugal, Zakir Hussain, Sanjay Mishra, Saurabh Dwivedi, and Manish Chaudhari.