“The last four-five years have been a bit of a ride for me and my family…most of my films flopped, lot of the specialists and analysts started writing my death knell,” said actor Shah Rukh Khan after winning CNN-News18’s Indian Of The Year 2023 Award, adding that analysts and “idiots” were the same. 

The Hindi film actor made a comeback on the big screen after a hiatus of four years with his film Pathaan in January last year. But in the run up to its release, the star cast of the multi-crore bagger film did not give any interviews to the media. Reports then claimed that the actor and his co-star Deepika Padukone were avoiding media interviews as a PR strategy for the film. 

But months later, Aaj Tak anchor Sudhir Chaudhary claimed that the actor had told him that he has stopped giving interviews to media, or speaking about his personal life on public platforms. 

At the award show on Wednesday, Shah said on a “personal level, a little bit of bothersome and unpleasant things also happened to say the least,” ostensibly referring to his son Aryan Khan’s imprisonment in an alleged drugs-on-cruise case in October 2021. Shah said it made him “learn a lesson to be very quiet and work hard with dignity”. 

He said that one must “know it in the heart” that even when everything is good, “suddenly out of nowhere, life may come and hit you” but during such times, one must keep doing what they do, and know that it is “an abrasion, a nasty plot twist.”    

Aryan was embroiled in the controversial drugs case following a raid on Goa-bound Cordelia cruise ship off the shores of Mumbai. He spent about three weeks in Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail before the Bombay High Court gave him a clean chit.

Media trial 

Through his jail term, the then 24-year-old was subjected to rigorous media trials with wall-to-wall coverage of the alleged “drug bust”. The TV anchors jumped to declare Aryan guilty and concocted narratives of an alleged Bollywood drugs nexus. Big media deployed huge teams at the Narcotics Bureau’s office, Khan’s residence, Arthur jail and so on — to give minute-to-minute updates on the case, oblivious to any other news.     

CNN-News18’s Hindi counterpart News18 India too ran updates on the case throughout the day. It broadcasted headlines like “Beech samundar, drugs ka bawandar” (a cyclone of drugs in the middle of the sea). Another headline that kept flashing was: “Nashe ke samundar mein abhineta ka beta” (son of an actor in the sea of intoxication).

The channel had four reporters on the ground in Mumbai, reporting from different locations, one of which included a beachfront. All of the reporters narrated at least once, the Sushant Singh Rajput case and how Bollywood has often been involved in the consumption of drugs.

Newslaundry had earlier written on Khan scripting his fairy-tale comback through Pathaan. Read here.