Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan’s bromance is the best the industry has ever seen. While the industry has pitted the two megastars against each other for the longest time, the two have stuck together all this while in spite of being each other’s biggest competitors. In an exclusive interview with DNA, Shah Rukh opened up about his equation with the ‘Sultan’ star and walked us through the different phases of their relationship over the years.
On the initial phase of their friendship:
"I don’t think he’d be able to remember how our friendship began either. Before our time together on the sets of Karan Arjun, I’d go to his house because I knew his brother and sister. I knew he was a big star. We hardly hung around back then. Whenever I would be at his house, he would hardly be around because he was really busy with his film shoots. He would say a customary ‘Hi’ and hang out with us for some time."
On starting to spend time together:
"I got to know him better during Karan Arjun. Because we were both mad enough to do a lot of mad things during that time. We would just drive away from shooting, run away, come back to Mumbai and nobody would even know about it. Then we would go back the next morning, without sleeping, go a little…(Laughs) unrested in the morning, finish work that would normally happen over two days, just because we felt like working really hard that day."
On people trying to create differences between the two:
"Salman told me that when we were at loggerheads, people would come and bitch among each other. He said, “I never said anything in front of them. When they used to leave, the first thing I would tell the family was, ‘What losers, yaar! Poor guys! They are hoping that they will add more fuel to the fight. But that’s never going to happen. These idiots don’t understand that."
On their endless conversations with each other:
"For the last two nights, I have been hanging out with him. I have been alone, so I just go there and we sit and chat. And we chat till early in the morning and I don’t even know what we talk about. We have not talked about any logical things at all in the last few times we have met. There’s nothing of essence that we sit down and talk about."
On feeling that there is no need to be vocal about how they perceive each other:
"I think it’s because of this ease, this respect and a strange trust in both of us that we are there for each other. We don’t need each other for small things. He tweeted my next movie’s look (directed by Imtiaz Ali). He himself would offer to do it. ‘Main kar doon! Chal main kar deta hoon!’ he would tell me. It’s not something we plan. We are quite ‘yahoo’ which means we are completely off-the-cuff. We just do things for each other because we feel them. We don’t plan, we don’t plot, we don’t design, we don’t figure out, we just do it. That’s what our friendship is more about than anything else. That’s the most personal thing he or I can tell you about us."
On the warmth and strength of their friendship:
"I think we have a strange, unspoken love. When we became friends, I didn’t know this. But I know now that should ¬— God forbid — either of us be in trouble, we know we will be there for each other always. I know that for a fact. It could be very personal or professional. But he is the one guy I can call upon to do the strangest of things for me if I need it, and so can he."