SRK-Letterman interview: Fun, but ultimately falls short of revealing anything new

Dear Mr. Letterman,

I had been excited for weeks now to watch your interview with Shah Rukh Khan, the first Indian celebrity on your rather exclusive Netflix original show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. When I met my future husband in 2009, I told him that my first love was Shah Rukh Khan. The man who first introduced me to love as a feeling and romance as a fine art. That’s perhaps the story with many women my age. Time has flown by and many good looking, talented actors have entered the playing field. But no one has ever made an impact like him.

Let me first tell you that the interview was a fun one hour of content. You spoke to him in New York and at his home in Mumbai, played foreigner in India, took beauty shots of Mumbai, played cricket, and shared stories and banter with Shah Rukh. But as an Indian viewer it left me a tad disappointed. There was mutual respect and some terrific wit on display, but at the end of an hour, I was unsure if I had seen you speak to the person or the persona. After thirty years of being a star and fulfilling everyone’s expectation of who he is, perhaps there is no line left anymore.

He confesses he is an employee of the myth of his stardom, and I really wish you had asked him how this myth came to be. How did he build this empire based on unconditional affection from billions of people, most of whom have never really met him. How did a man without conventional good looks or physicality, no powerful last name or exceptional acting talent reign for years as the nation’s most successful actor? How did a carefully created PR exercise over decades, market him to an audience that continues to love him even as his career goes through its worst patch?

You did speak briefly about Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the movie that put him on the map and changed the way a nation perceived romance. He made young girls like me believe that there is a man out there who can look at you like there is truly no one else on this planet. For older women, he was perhaps the symbol of a time gone by when a man could sweep them of their feet with a dimpled smile or romance them like their husbands never did. He taught us to hope and have faith and wish upon stars that our dreams came true. It may seem nonsensical for a full grown man to run around town wooing a woman, making a utter fool of himself or getting slapped and beaten up in the bargain. But that’s what we loved about him. He turned vulnerable into the new sexy.

As India’s upwardly mobile urban middle class were exposed to foreign brands and western culture post liberalisation, he became the face that balanced global aspirations with Indian traditions. He wore GAP and went to a temple, played basketball but lived with his mom. His characters were impulsive, adventurous, romantic and unafraid to weep and show real emotion, qualities that I am afraid are rare in most men.

Did you know that for almost his entire career, he never kissed his female co-star on screen? In an industry or society at large where men are infamous for being predatory and/or unfaithful, Shah Rukh was loved because we believed he was loyal to his wife and didn’t kiss other women on screen because he was married. This may not be true, but perception is the bedrock on which he built his career.

The man has been a professional actor for three decades, a producer of films and content on OTT platforms, and the proprietor of India’s most cutting edge visual effects company. He is perhaps the most cerebral actor we have in Bollywood. Those two words are rarely used together in a sentence. We do have other fine actors, I am not denying it but most perhaps have the IQ or off-screen personality of a door knob or a hyperactive monkey.

If he is known and loved by 3.5 billion around the world as the episode claimed, he really needs no introduction. Yet the entire episode felt like an exposition into who is Shah Rukh Khan and fun facts about his life. The story of this Indian celebrity, perhaps someone your team had limited knowledge of and was surprised by in the process of filming. But thank you for speaking to him anyway, and including an Indian in the list of esteemed guests that include Barack Obama and Malala Yousafzai. Just when we were forgetting how rare he is, or the fact that he brought love into our lives, we were introduced again, and it was a pleasure catching up with him.

Yours Sincerely,

An SRK fan

Views expressed are the author's own.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.