I made Darling because we had this idea and we were all very excited. I spoke to Fardeen (Khan, the film's leading man) and we just made it. It's a very strange genre, the nearest thing I would say is that it's a scary comedy. It will scare the hell out of you, but it will make you laugh as well, which is a strange mixture.

It starts off as a romantic comedy, then becomes a thriller, then a horror film, then a comedy and finally ends up on a highly emotional note. So I mixed up about seven to eight genres in the same film.

Is that hard to do -- juggle different genres yet keep the emotional graph alive?

I think eventually you are creating some characters and putting them in a certain situation, and if the situation is bizarre enough to inherently create that kind of a thing, it would come.

It's not as if on a starting level one sat down and said 'let me make a story that keeps on changing genres.' It's just the characters and situation that lead you to different genres.

So for a unique script like this, do you lock the script and make all the genre decisions beforehand, or does that change as you make the film, changing as you shoot and edit the film?

Darling was pretty much locked. I used to have a habit of not having a script and going and just doing it. I've done this in many films actually including Satya, where I didn't have a locked script, and Company.

But I took this long gap, and now [things have changed]. Definitely, it has its effect. You have much more clarity. Instinctively, I might still know my job of how to make my film, but there can be things you just lose sight of and lose contact with. I think it's very important to have a locked script because you can concentrate on just enhancing it, especially when you're talking about a film as complex as Aag or Darling.

Also read: 'I tried to imitate Rajnikanth'

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