Mumbai: Despite being an outsider, Shah Rukh Khan conquered the Bollywood industry with his wit, charm and hard work.
However, veteran journalist Pooja Samant revealed during her recent appearance on Zahra Jani’s podcast that Shah Rukh was quite short-tempered and couldn’t take criticism during his early days in the industry.
Recalling an incident, Samant shared that when her magazine had written something negative about him, SRK couldn’t digest it and got offended. He wanted journalists to write only good things about him.
“Shah Rukh is a very darling human being who is also very charming, as we all know. But during his early days, he was actually very short-tempered. He was never able to digest the fact that some media outlet was writing against him. He wanted people to write good things about him. The editor of our magazine wrote about Shah Rukh’s aggressive way of talking, his whole Delhi style, and about some of his films which did not do very well,” the veteran journalist remarked.
Recalling how SRK got offended and refused to give an interview to Samant during the shooting of ‘Baazigar’ , she disclosed, “I had gone to the Baazigar set at Filmistaan to get an interview. They were shooting the song ‘Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein’, and during the break I went to his makeup room, and I introduced myself. As soon as I told him the name of the magazine I used to work for, he got annoyed. He didn’t want to give an interview to someone who worked for a magazine that wrote such negative things about him.”
“He looked at me and said, ‘Acha hua tu agayi aaj saamne. Tum logon ki himmat kaise huyi mere baare mai aisa likhne ki?’ (It’s good you showed your face. How dare you publish such stuff about me? He said that if I wanted an interview, I’d have to get my editor to come and meet him. I called the office, and my editor agreed to come. Upon seeing him, Shah Rukh jumped at him, but my editor stayed calm,” she added.
The veteran further shared that the actor has changed over the years, and has become quite humble and down-to-earth now.
Recalling a meeting with Shah Rukh years later, she said: “Things got sorted out at that point, and I remember that many years later I went to Red Chillies’ office. Shah Rukh was sitting in a room above when he saw me. He came down, hugged me and asked me how I was doing. He was lovely.”
On the work front, after delivering back-to-back hits ‘Jawan’, Pathaan’ and ‘Dunki’, Shah Rukh is currently preparing up for Siddharth Anand’s ‘King’, which also stars his daughter Suhana Khan.
