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Shah Rukh Khan had one of the best years of his career in 2023 with Pathaan, Jawan and Dunki and many believed that the outpouring of love that came for the star was because of his long absence from the silver screen. After the release of 2018 film Zero, SRK took a hiatus from the movies for a few years and in a recent interview, the actor opened up about that phase of his life. When asked if he took a break because of the many back-to-back flops, he clarified that the reason behind this long hiatus wasn’t the failure of the films but because he just didn’t feel like getting up in the morning to shoot.
SRK recalled that after the release of Zero in the December of 2018, he decided to put a pin in his plans in January of 2019. In fact, he recollected, that he was supposed to start shooting for a film but he called the producer and declared that he doesn’t want to work for a year. Calling himself unprofessional, SRK told Variety, “I’ve always maintained that the day I don’t feel like getting up in the morning and conquering the shoot, I don’t want to work. It wasn’t the failure of the films, to be honest. I was doing a film in January, and this was in December. Very unprofessional of me. I just woke up and I said, ‘I don’t want to go and shoot this film’.”
He recalled that when he called his producer to share his thoughts, they didn’t believe him. He said at the time, he just didn’t feel like acting. “I called the producer and I said to him that I don’t want to work for a year. He said, ‘It’s not possible. You don’t sit without working for even a minute. So you don’t like the film, say no, don’t say you’re not working for a year’. And a year and a half later, he did call and he said, ‘I was really surprised you actually are not working’. So I just didn’t want to work. I just didn’t want to act. I didn’t feel like acting. Because for me, acting is genuinely very, very organic,” he shared.
Before the hiatus, SRK had appeared in leading roles in films like Zero, Jab Harry Met Sejal, Raees and Fan, and none of these films could replicate the success of his earlier films. In fact, many at the time had started suggesting that perhaps SRK’s stardom was starting to decline as his choice of films was seen as a little too experimental. For Shah Rukh though, all these films had something special. He said that the films he loves the most are the ones that didn’t do as well as expected but he admitted that these films were not simple enough for a mass audience. He shared, “So, all the films that I do, whether it’s Jab Harry Met Sejal or Zero or the ones which didn’t do well like Fan — I thought it was an interesting film. I love that film. Some of the ones I love the most are the ones which haven’t done well.”
SRK shared that “cinema is a mass communication medium” and it is necessary that it communicates to a lot of people. “It should not intellectualise. It should not sermonise. I always keep saying it can’t moralise. It should just be simple. Some of these films which didn’t do well were so personal that they were not simple enough, they were so personal they got very shrunk,” he said.
SRK has announced his next film. He will be seen in King, directed by Sujoy Ghosh. SRK has described the film as an “action drama” which will be a “cool, massy, action, emotional film.”
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