Shah Rukh Khan was in New York on 9/11 with son Aryan and wife Gauri, required special permission to leave country

Shah Rukh recalled that Hiroo woke him up in shock and showed him the visuals of the attack. At first, he thought that the plane carrying the film crew had crashed. He said, “I was woken up… Karan’s mother, Mrs Hiroo, she showed me the television and I thought it’s the plane that our crew is taking, that’s why she is showing that there has been an accident. There was press on floor below my room, waiting to do the interviews and I was like, ‘What has happened?'”

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Shah Rukh said the he was stuck in New York for the next few days, as airlines were grounded. But, after a few days, he got special permission from the authorities and flew to Toronto with his family and Hiroo. “I was stuck there for 3-4 days with my family. Then, we kind of made our way out, went to Toronto and flew back because all the flights and everything was cancelled. So we asked for special permission and requested some people, and they kind of understood. Very kindly, they let the family go because the kids and mothers and everyone… so we got out of it. I think I was deeply affected by it, like everyone else was,” he said.

In the years after 9/11, Shah Rukh was detained thrice at different airports in the US. Once, when he was invited by Yale University to deliver an address, the actor reached three hours late because he was detained at the airport. “Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself, I always take a trip to America. The immigration guys kicked the star out of stardom,” he said during his address at Yale, and hinted at the racial profiling being practiced at US airports.