Badshah Khan who is known to be super energetic and fun on the sets of the film stated that nobody has ever dared to misbehave with a woman on his film sets. He even spoke at length about gender equality in Bollywood and the cultural differences in India.
When asked if the actor has anytime witnessed sexual misconduct in the film industry he said, “At a level when I’m making films or working in films, we are very clear about the attitude to women. Even the smallest aspects, of the names coming first in the title, which is not going to do anything, but the kind of respectability.”
Shah Rukh further added, “Even this small thing needs to be done just to bring about the equality... Just see what we’ve reduced ourselves to. You know, to put a girl’s name in front just to show what little guys we are, thinking of them as equals. And that is sad and that is strangely dichotomous when you’re talking about creativity, and you have boys and girls working together.
Shah Rukh said, “I have never personally, first hand and nobody, if I may say, nobody dared misbehave with a woman on my set, I am very clear on that. There will be dissent for everything and I think, like you would also believe and we all believe, there has to be a discussion on it.”
Talking about radical standoff he said, “I think you can have a discussion and then you can talk about it in our country - we are the biggest democracy - and if you are the biggest democracy, dissent is a part and parcel of that and as much is discussion. So, when you have a story and you know when you go out sometimes, there’s dissent, but as a filmmaker, as a citizen of a country and the world, you know when there’s dissent, can we just have a little bit of discussion about it and sort it out instead of you know taking standoff positions... So it is possible.”
Shah Rukh further added, “Because of social media, whenever a certain thing, when small factions or fractions of things happen now, they seem a little bigger. But the beauty of all this is that within all this trolling and anger and people expressing themselves, they’re all also connecting. I just see it on social media. I don’t see it live anywhere and I would be wrong to comment on it that way, but I think if you have this kind of dissent or whatever if people claim it, I think just a bit of discussion especially, finally, if it’s not going to be inclusive, everybody will suffer. But I think we’re not at that stage at all in our country.”
