“I’ve never been nervous like this,” Shah Rukh Khan said on the afternoon before the Met Gala, where on Monday evening the Indian superstar will make his first-ever red carpet appearance at what is generally considered the party of the year.
“I’m wondering if I can run away from this now,” added a man whose onscreen derring-do is the stuff of cinematic legend; a multi-hyphenate whose many ventures have earned him a net worth estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars and a made him a figure greatly beloved of, and elevated to cult status by, generations of fans.
“I’m actually very shy,” said Shah Rukh Khan, whose legions of devotees know him simply as SRK.
The actor, in town from Mumbai, was seated on a sofa in a suite high above Manhattan. Far below was spread the pointillist green carpet of Central Park. Tapping a Terea tobacco stick into an heated induction device, Mr. Khan discreetly took a drag. After chain-smoking cigarettes for decades, he quit very publicly on his 59th birthday in 2024. His decision to stop, like nearly everything else he does, was covered in the South Asian press with the kind of attention typically devoted to matters of state.
The man behind the Shah Rukh Khan legend is surprisingly modest in person. This is true also in a physical sense. Slender and slight of build, Mr. Khan was dressed in a pair of Rick Owens cargo jeans, Rick Owens sneakers, a Hermès hoodie unzipped deeply enough to reveal his smooth and chiseled chest and an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph watch.
While Shah Rukh Khan is not, as he quickly noted, a fashion devotee, he spent one day of his 72-hour sojourn in New York for the Met Gala prowling the aisles at Saks and Bergdorf Goodman, hunting down “the perfect pair” of jeans.
“I’m a jeans-and-T-shirt person,” said Mr. Khan, whose first clothing purchase — made when he was still attending St. Columba’s, a private boy’s school in New Delhi — was a pair of five-pocket denims from a shop called Junction Jeans.
Mr. Khan will be dressed in starkly simple fashion for the Met Gala by one of India’s top designers, Sabyasachi Mukherjee. “The only thing he said was, ‘I don’t want to wear shoulder pads that make me look like an airplane,’” said Mr. Mukherjee, whose designs are better known for their elaborate ornamentation than experimental silhouettes.
For his very brief turn on the red carpet (he flies back to India to resume filming the night of the party), Mr. Khan will offer his own interpretation of the theme on an evening celebrating Black male style and dandyism, a quality celebrated for millenniums in India.
“He dresses simply and we respected that,” said Mr. Mukherjee, who designed for the superstar a court jacket in Murshidabad silk resembling a Moghul-inspired sherwani, black trousers, and a black crepe de Chine shirt open to reveal a cluster of chains and jewels that include a large letter K in diamonds. He will also be carrying a walking stick with a jeweled tiger’s head.
“It’s a bit rapper,” Mr. Khan said of the bling, adding that this first-ever Met Gala red carpet might also be his last.
“I know so many people in the fashion industry, but it’s really not my world,” he added, noting that his snap decision to accept Mr. Mukherjee’s invitation to the gala was partly influenced by a desire to counter some of the more pernicious stereotypes about South Asian actors. “The West still sees and casts you as this exotic, the Peter Sellers ‘Birdie Num Num’ type,” said Mr. Khan. It is probably worth noting that, despite his having nearly 50 million Instagram followers and a vast global fan base, he has yet to appear in a Hollywood film.
“I’m not being modest when I say I have no idea of the stardom I have,” said Mr. Khan, referring to himself as “an employee of the myth.” That is not to suggest he is unaware of the potency a single red carpet snapshot of him walking this particular red carpet could have. “While I’m acting all the time, it would be strange, or unacceptable, to play a role on the red carpet,” said Mr. Khan, who is long past needing to promote anything or impersonate anyone.
For this particular Monday night in May, then, Shah Rukh Khan plays himself.
