Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan once sat with comedian Vir Das for three nights to perfect the latter’s “terribly immature” jokes written as a young comic, Das recalled in a chat with Hasan Minhaj recently.
Asked how he would describe Shah Rukh to Americans, Vir took a stroll down memory lane and recalled the time when he was invited to Shah Rukh’s iconic bungalow Mannat in Mumbai.
“Two years into coming to Mumbai as a young comic, I get invited to Shah Rukh Khan's house to write the script for an awards ceremony,” he said on the podcast Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know.
“Mannat is this house on the sea, he's got this study that is wooden paneled and wooden ceilings and all of it, you know, and the electronic wooden blinds that I'd never f**king seen before and books and awards and you show up and, you know, I'd written some jokes that were terribly immature, but he kind of sat with me for three nights,” he added.
Calling the moments he spent with the Jawan star “cool”, Vir further said, “And he's like, all right, young blood, what do you have? And three nights, that's pretty cool. And fed us, played video games, you know, just really a cool, cool guy, only guy I've ever seen. When we write words, you expect somebody to just kind of, please just say it like I wrote it in my head. Perform it.”
Lauding the superstar’s comedic prowess, Vir noted, “He's the only guy I've seen who will change it and it's just better because it's him. So he can, he understands a joke. He knows his way around a joke. He understands a misdirect. He understands a pause, all of that stuff, and he makes it better.”
“I think what encapsulates him is he showed up in Mumbai with one suitcase from Delhi, looked out at the sea and said, I'm going to be the king of this city. And then did. And bought the house by the sea and he makes you believe it could happen for you too,” Vir continued.
Signing off, Vir said, “But at the end of the day, even if it doesn't, you're just glad it happened for him. I think that's Shah Rukh Khan. You feel the room move when he walks in.”
Meanwhile, Minhaj, too, recalled the times he had tried to describe who Shah Rukh is to Americans. “I go, so do you know movies? And they're like, yeah. And I go, he's just the movies. I could, I didn't even use Tom Cruise as an analogy. I'm like, he is as foundational to cinema as the opening credits are. Like it's, it's, he's in the DNA code of it,” he said.
To this, Vir added, “It's a different sound. I think if Tom Cruise was to walk into a crowd, they'd be like, oh my God, Tom. If Shah Rukh Khan walked in, you'd just be like… ”