Nora Fatehi says Shah Rukh Khan’s larger-than-life aura is ‘god given’, calls him ‘ambassador of Bollywood and India’: ‘Not just Canada, all African countries know who he is’

Nora Fatehi acknowledged Shah Rukh Khan’s standing among the top five most renowned personalities globally. Reflecting on her upbringing in Canada, she revealed her early awareness of the superstar’s stature. The actor stressed that Shah Rukh’s influence transcends borders, resonating strongly not only in Canada but also across the African subcontinent.

She sad, “Canada is still a cosmopolitan place. We have lot of Indian and South Asians but all the countries in Africa would know who Shah Rukh Khan is. Be it Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Somalia and Egypt, all of them would know Shah Rukh Khan. He is the ambassador of Bollywood. He is ambassador of India.”

Nora also shared her reason of being attracted to Shah Rukh Khan and Hindi films ever since she was a child. “It’s his charm and also the kind of films he did. They were family friendly. You could sit at home with family and watch them because that becomes a cultural thing. We would watch films at home with family. We couldn’t watch Hollywood films because they weren’t appropriate to watch with family, at least if you come from a brown family.”

Nora expressed how Shah Rukh Khan’s films, and Bollywood movies in general, encapsulated family values cherished by South Asians, fostering a deep connection that Hollywood couldn’t replicate. She said, “Shah Rukh did films that me, my mom and my grandmom liked. So, I grew up with hm, fell in love with his romantic side, his chivalry, women loved that. It’s a charm about Bollywood that other film industries like Hollywood did not have. You gravitated towards things that you relate to and we could related to Bollywood films because it embodied the same things that we had in our culture too.”

Speaking about Shah Rukh Khan’s innocence, Nora said, “He has an innocence on his face. He has a clean energy. You can see it in his eyes. There is something about some actors that draws us towards them. The way they smile, their eyes…that’s because their energy is clean and that’s why you gravitate towards them. In Arabic we say niyat, like his niyat is clean.”

Nora further talked about the time she met Shah Rukh Khan and how he treated her with a lot of respect. She said, “I have a lot of respect for him because the couple of times I met him, he was very respectful, very warm and nice despite him being one of the most famous persons in the world. This wasn’t the case with many other stars who were disrespectful and mean.”