A video of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) in which he says that social boycott campaigns do not affect him is being shared on social media. The post which shares it also calls for a boycott of his upcoming film Pathaan. After a song named ‘Besharam rang’ from Pathaan was released, boycott calls started to trend on social media over the saffron colour dress Deepika Padukone wears in the song. Let’s fact-check this video through this article.
Claim: Shah Rukh Khan said that social boycott calls do not affect him.
Fact: The viral video is a short clip of a full-length interview he gave to ETC Bollywood in 2016. Shah Rukh Khan was promoting his film on a show hosted by film critic Komal Nahta. When asked if the social boycott campaign against his film Dilwale affected the film, he said that ‘maybe we did not make a good film‘ and that he is not affected by such calls for a boycott. He also joked that when a film does not perform well, such calls for a boycott can be pointed out as reasons. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Based on the video’s logo, Z-ETC Bollywood, we searched the internet for a extended version of this SRK interview. This led us to a 27-second video clip uploaded on Facebook by Zee5 on 15 April 2016. The description of this post reads, ‘ Watched #FirstDayFANShow yet? Shah Rukh Khan talks about #Fan on #ETC in this interview with Komal Nahta: http://bit.ly/SRK-FAN ETC Bollywood #JabraFan.‘
Taking hints based on the post description, we further refined our search, and found the promo of this interview uploaded to the Facebook page of ETC Bollywood and also the full version of this interview which was uploaded on ‘Dailymotion’. You can see them both here and here.
This interview with a film critic and the host of the ETC Bollywood business show, Komal Nahta, was in 2016 when SRK appeared on the show to promote his film Fan.’ When Komal asked him if the social boycott (here and here) against his previous film Dilwale had any impact on its performance, he can be seen jokingly saying that one can point to such things as an excuse when their films do poorly; he also says that maybe they (Rohit Shetty, him, Kajol) did not make a good film. He said he does not get swayed by such Hawa (air). You can see this discussion in the full interview from 33 minutes and 45 seconds.
To sum up, old video of SRK’s response to boycott of his film Dilwale is shared in context of his upcoming film Pathaan.
