Shah Rukh Khan’s recent performance at a high-profile wedding in Delhi has again sparked online criticism against the actor for dancing at weddings despite becoming a billionaire. He also recently performed at the lavish Udaipur wedding of US-based billionaire Rama Raju Mantena’s daughter Netra Mantena.
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Some fans of Shah Rukh have jumped in his defense on X, sharing a clip from a 2000 interview of the actor in which he defends his decades-old practice of dancing at weddings. “My answer always, to anyone who asks me, is like a child: ‘Why not?’ What is the problem with that? Like I was doing a wedding in Delhi of a young girl who’d asked me to do it. She said, ‘My mom wants you to do it.’ Unfortunately, her mother was suffering from cancer. I went to the hospital at 2 am, took a 2-in-1 along, put the song on, and danced for her specially,” Shah Rukh revealed.
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“I don’t know if the amount of money I took from them was worth it or not. Unfortunately, she died after some time. But it must’ve made her happy somewhere,” he added on Vir Sanghvi’s show Star Talk. “I’m an entertainer who makes people happy. Can you put a price to this? I’m sorry, a lot of actors will disagree but I want to ask everyone, what’s so special about me that I can’t dance at a wedding?,” asked Shah Rukh.
When Sanghvi argued that dancing at a high-profile wedding implies that Shah Rukh Khan is catering to only the rich and wealthy instead of the masses, Shah Rukh clapped back, “I’m sure if a poor guy asks me to dance at his wedding, I’ll go and do it. I’ve been put in a position where I have the ability to make people happy. Just one moment of dancing to ‘Mehendi Laga Ke Rakhna’ is very simple. There’s nothing enigmatic, huge, and out of the world about it. So I get out of my car and dance when my song plays, whosoever’s wedding it is. And I’m very proud of it.”
At a recent high-profile Delhi wedding, Shah Rukh Khan congratulated the bride on the stage before she asked him to repeat the slogan “Zubaan Kesari” from his infamous commercial for the pan masala giant Vimal. Shah Rukh tried to dodge that sweetly, but the bride insisted that he mouths the slogan on stage. Shah Rukh had to end the back and forth by asking in jest if the bride was a fan of him or Vimal. Since Shah Rukh was put on the spot, a lot of his fans took to social media to express lament over the star having to perform at weddings despite his billionaire status.
