I wasn’t listening to audiences: Shah Rukh Khan

Shah Rukh Khan addressed his nearly five-year-long sabbatical from films in a recent interview with journalist Richard Quest. He admitted that he was ‘licking his wounds’ after experiencing several successive big budget flops and resolved to stop being too indulgent with his output while planning his return. In the 2010s, Shah Rukh starred in the high-profile failures ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal’, ‘Fan’, ‘Ra.One’, ‘Raaes’ and ‘Zero’. Subsequently, he went underground between 2019 and 2023.

In the interview, which took place in Dubai, Shah Rukh was asked about this period by ‘Quest’, who asked if he was ‘licking his wounds’ and ‘feeling sorry for himself’. Shah Rukh said, “I had massive flops and they did very badly. I was licking my wounds. But you know what I did? I learnt to make the best pizza in the world. I stopped listening to stories. I stopped wanting to tell stories. I made myself a little kitchen and I started learning how to make pizzas. I learnt perseverance. Because to make the perfect round pizza, you have to first make a million square ones.”

Asked if his family encouraged him to return to work and if rebounding was difficult, Shah Rukh said, “I was glad that my family didn’t tell me, ‘Listen, your pizzas are better than your films. Stop making films’. I’m glad that they turned around and said, ‘As good as your pizzas are. Your films are better’. They were very encouraging, especially my children and my team. I’d become indulgent. I’d started becoming too innovative. I was looking for perfection and I started failing. I needed to be excellent. I needed to be unique, but I needed to look at what the audience wanted.”

Shah Rukh admitted that he’d ‘stopped hearing’ the audiences’ demands. “I used to go where there were thousands and lakhs of people waving at me, but I wouldn’t hear or feel what they wanted to see out of me. So, I went and did a film about a vertically challenged guy. I did a film about a manic, psychopathic fan, but no. People just like to see me giving hope, happiness and love, so let’s get back to that,” he said.

And that’s exactly what Shah Rukh did in his comeback year, delivering three back-to-back hits, two of which emerged as the biggest films of his three-decade career. Shah Rukh began 2023 with ‘Pathaan’, which made over Rs 1000 crore worldwide and then followed it up with ‘Jawan’, which grossed over Rs 1100 crore globally. He capped it off with ‘Dunki’, which grossed Rs 470 crore globally.