Sushmita Sen entered Bollywood with Mahesh Bhatt’s Dastak after winning Miss Universe. During filming, she fell in love with the director, Vikram Bhatt, who was married to his childhood sweetheart, Aditi, at the time. The relationship started with mutual dislike. During a throwback interview on Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, Sushmita labeled Vikram the 'biggest snob' of the set, while he admitted he found her difficult, accusing her of having an attitude and constantly altering his dialogues.
Sushmita revealed that Vikram would routinely complain about her behavior to his mentor and producer, Mahesh Bhatt, before the two eventually connected and began their high-profile romance. She had said, "He came to me running on the set one day when I broke my finger and this was the time, I couldn’t stand him. This is towards the end of the film. I thought he had something personal against me because he would keep complaining about me to Mahesh Bhatt. After that, we started talking and became friends. We ended up in an affair long after. It was a slow chemistry."
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When asked if Bhatt was married when their affair began, Sen said, "Not when we started seeing each other but when we started working with each other. Before the chemistry set in, I was married."
The actress further added, "His wife and he were not living together. I can’t condemn a man or make him feel guilty if he had a bad marriage. I don’t have anything against his ex-wife or his daughter. Some things aren’t meant to be. I don’t feel guilty because I have done something very openly. He was in a divorce when I met him, and I wasn’t going to wait to tell the world that I love him just because he hadn’t got through the divorce yet."
Though Sushmita and Vikram parted ways after a few years, they remained fiercely supportive of one another. Decades later, when the actress faced intense public trolling and was labeled a 'gold digger' over her brief relationship with businessman Lalit Modi, Vikram publicly stepped up to defend her honour.