Daily Times

Bollywood actor-director Farhan Akhtar admitted feeling ‘betrayed’ when his father, veteran writer Javed Akhtar, married Shabana Azmi and divorced his mother Honey Irani.

In one of the episodes of Javed Akhtar and Salim Javed’s new docuseries ‘Angry Young Men: The Salim-Javed Story’, the former’s son Farhan Akhtar made a confession that he felt betrayed by his father upon his second marriage and divorce from his mother.

“There was a phase when I was angry with him, I felt betrayed by him. There were all those very normal emotions that I did go through as a child growing up,” he said.

The ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ actor credited his stepmother Azmi for improving the family’s relationship later. “It took time to go back to normal with my dad. Shabana played a big part in creating that normalcy,” he added.

For the unversed, Javed Akhtar married former child artist and writer Honey Irani in 1972, with whom he shared two kids, Farhan and Zoya. Their relationship fell apart later, and the veteran married Shabana Azmi in 1984. He divorced his wife in the following year. In one of the episodes, Javed Akhtar also spoke about his marriage with Honey and took responsibility for the failure. He said, “Honey is one person in the world, towards whom I feel guilty. And she is the only person.”

“67 percent responsibility lies on my shoulders, for the failure of that marriage. If I had as much understanding as I have today, perhaps things would not have gone wrong. It is very difficult to accept, but that’s how it is,” admitted the veteran.

The three-part docuseries is currently streaming on the OTT platform Amazon Prime Video.