Inside Shah Rukh Khan’s gift of gab: Why the world misses the golden age of SRK interviews

Till eight years ago, whenever a Shah Rukh Khan film was up for release, there was a euphoria among his fans. Not only because they’d get to watch “the last of the superstars”, as he once described himself, on the big screen, but also because it would be accompanied by a plethora of the most quotable, the wittiest, and even the most profound interviews. Shah Rukh Khan, the master conversationalist, would come to the fore to serve Brand SRK. In 2026, the actor remains a marketing genius even though he has barely given any interviews since 2018. What was once achieved through him going on an interview overdrive is now being claimed through its sheer, almost frustrating absence.

Inside Shah Rukh Khan’s gift of gab

“Given how many interviews Shah Rukh Khan has done in his career, there will never be a dearth. For every mood, there’s a lovely SRK interview to re-watch,” Mohar Basu, the author of Shah Rukh Khan: Legend, Icon, Star (2004), tells SCREEN. There’s most certainly truth to her observation. If you want a ruminative SRK interview, there’s the 2012 one with Tehelka. If you want an intimate one, there’s My Next Guest With David Letterman (2019). If you want him at his cheekiest, skim through his Rapid Fire rounds on Koffee with Karan. And if you want to find him at his wittiest and most unguarded, there’s the evergreen 2017 two-part podcast with All India Bakchod (AIB).

During that podcast, he quips that he knows how to ace his look for every media appearance, whether it’s posing for his wax statue at Madame Tussauds, leaning in for Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, or lounging casually on his library sofa for the irreverent AIB. But even within the same conversation, Shah Rukh can take the tone from disarming to discerning. “He doesn’t merely answer questions; he engages with them. He can make you laugh one moment, leave you thinking the next, and then surprise you with something deeply personal,” says Mandvi Sharma, his global publicist from 2012 to 2016.

And if you want to watch Shah Rukh Khan at his most unhinged in interviews, there are the television ones he did back in the 1990s, which are available on Lehren Retro. “There were quotable quotes a minute,” recalls Anupama Chopra, who went from interviewing him on film sets to writing a book on him, King of Bollywood (2007). “I first interviewed him on the set of Ram Jaane (1995), and even then, he was incredibly funny. He’d say things like, ‘They say I have five expressions. Well, that’s a good thing because the others have only three,'” she adds, laughing. Even the last interview she did with him nine years ago is one for the ages merely because of the signature riffing he brought to it.

“It was post midnight at Mehboob Studio in Bandra. There was him and Anushka Sharma, and they were promoting Jab Harry Met Sejal. There was a stray dog interrupting the interview at the time with his barking. And then, there came a moment when Shah Rukh just barked back at him! It was hilarious,” recounts Anupama. She also flew down to Lisbon, Portugal a year before that to follow him for a day when he was shooting Imtiaz Ali’s romantic comedy. “Even in Lisbon, there were fans who spotted him and came up to him for photographs! Even though we talked for a whole day, it felt like we could go on for another 24 hours,” she admits.

The day Shah Rukh Khan decided to stop giving interviews

Anupama recalls there was a time when she could dial up Shah Rukh and chat, only for him to ask her to hang up because he’d be getting mobbed somewhere. But with PR machinery taking over, social media scrutiny increasingly dominating celebrities’ lives, and an explosion of online content, Shah Rukh, like most stars of his generation, has also stepped back from giving interviews. Besides a few he did overseas on occasions, his last one would probably be with David Letterman. “These are terrible times when almost every actor/filmmaker is so guarded and rehearsed. People want questions in advance. On bleak days, I don’t see the point of this,” confesses Mohar, also an entertainment journalist.

Nasreen Munni Kabir, who directed the two-part documentary on the Inner World and the Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan back in 2004, argues that if she were the actor, she’d cut down on interviews too. “There were probably three key journalists then. Now, there are at least 55. So, if I was Shah Rukh, I’d also not give interviews to anyone, instead of giving it to a few and slighting the others. It’s only the media who’s missing him. Fans interact with him on X,” she says, referring to Shah Rukh’s popular #AskSRK sessions, which break the internet every time the actor kicks it off on the microblogging platform. His signature wit is intact, as he answers fan questions directly, instead of relying on middlemen like journalists or podcasters.

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“Nobody is interested in reading another book on Shah Rukh Khan. They want to know what he was doing 15 minutes ago. That’s where social media comes in,” adds Nasreen. Mandvi also offers a valid PR perspective on the changing ecosystem. “Somewhere along the way, meaningful conversations began losing ground to clickbait and sensationalism. The emphasis shifted from discovering a compelling human story to extracting a headline that would generate maximum eyeballs, often at the cost of context and substance. I do believe there is a dearth of Shah Rukh Khan-kind of interviews today. But perhaps more importantly, there is also a dearth of platforms that have the patience, curiosity, and editorial depth to do justice to conversations like those,” she points out.

That explains why Amitabh Bachchan also takes to his blog every night to communicate with his fans directly, even confessing in a recent post that even if publications stop writing about him, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. “Humara samachar patra ab yahan hai (Our newspaper is this now),” he declared. The actor had a famously strained relationship with the media in the 1970s and ’80s, marked by a boycott, before burying the hatchet in the 1990s. “Maybe I tried chasing Shah Rukh for the first couple of years. But like how Mr. Bachchan didn’t talk to the media for a decade, Shah Rukh has also indicated he doesn’t want to give interviews. So, there’s no question of ‘access’ anymore. I also feel he’s always been an outlier, so him not giving interviews has little to do with the larger ecosystem out there,” reasons Anupama.

But this dearth of Shah Rukh Khan interviews has opened two major gateways. The first is a rich supply of SRK anecdotes in order to make up for his lack of availability. Another is several younger stars opting out of interviews because they believe that’d aid their brand like it did Brand SRK. “But what they don’t understand is that Shah Rukh isn’t pulling off a power move when he doesn’t give interviews. He has spent years and years talking about himself, his thoughts, his opinions, his life, his memories, which has earned him the immense love he has from people across the world. If people don’t know you, how will they ever love you?,” asks Mohar.

Mandvi also hails authenticity as a key component of Brand SRK. “What makes him exceptional is that despite being one of the biggest superstars in the country, he never loses the human element in a conversation. He is honest, earnest, spontaneous and unapologetically himself. And that authenticity is something no amount of media training can manufacture,” she says.

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“His victories feel personal to his fans. So do his setbacks. People have celebrated with him, defended him, grown up with him and, in many ways, grown older with him. That is the kind of connection that cannot be manufactured by a publicity campaign. It is earned over years of consistency, hard work and emotional investment,” she adds, referring to his 2015 speech at the University of Edinburgh as a living, breathing masterclass on life.

When will Shah Rukh Khan do interviews again?

Having already earned his stripes, Shah Rukh Khan has admitted that he doesn’t have “anything new to say”. However, at the same event, where he was honoured with the ‘Indian of the Year’ award by CNN-News18 in 2023, he spoke about a personal setback he had faced a couple of years earlier, seemingly alluding to the arrest of his elder son, Aryan Khan. He said it made him learn a lesson — “Be quiet, be very quiet, and work hard with dignity. When you think everything is good, suddenly out of nowhere, life will come and hit you.” Like he did that year with the consecutive box-office successes of Siddharth Anand’s spy thriller Pathaan and Atlee’s action thriller Jawan, Aryan also bounced back last year with a memorable directorial debut in The Ba***ds of Bollywood on Netflix India.

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Aryan shying away from interviews and not smiling for the paparazzi may be a personality trait. But his father keeping distance from interviews — which have contributed a great deal to Brand SRK — may be a thought-through stand. But, like his legion of loyal fans, they stood by him through that period of absence as well. Even when he skips his annual birthday fan event today or is likely to keep to #AskSRK sessions for the promotions of his next film, Siddharth Anand’s action thriller King on December 24, he’s left enough room for a remote possibility. “His absence from long-form interviews has perhaps made people realise just how much value he brought to the art of conversation. Sometimes, it is only when a voice becomes less accessible that we fully appreciate how distinctive it was,” says Mandvi. “I hope he decides to do a long interview again. We will all be seated for it. The X AMAs aren’t cutting it anymore,” adds Mohar. Hoping Karan Johar gets him to the couch on the Koffee with Karan finale next year, Anupama also has her fingers crossed. “I hope he gives me just one more interview before I retire. That’s all, then I can rest peacefully.”