Aahana Kumra says she knew she had ‘made it’ when Shah Rukh Khan recognised her: ‘He knows my name’

Aahana Kumra, who has had two film releases in the last two weeks, has been working for nearly a decade after getting her start in theatre and even appearing in the TV series Yudh along with Amitabh Bachchan. In a recent interview, Aahana spoke about the time when she was taken aback as Shah Rukh Khan knew who she was. (Also read: India Lockdown review: Madhur Bhandarkar’s high-on-emotions drama revisits horrors of the pandemic)

In an interview with Healthshots, Aahana revealed, “We don’t come from film families, and we don’t have the kind of footing in the industry that the others get. There’s a lot of grooming that goes into these little kids in film families before they start their careers. Since they have all grown up in the same households, ye Shah Rukh uncle hain, ye woh uncle hain…(this is Shah Rukh unc it’s very normal for them. But for me to get Shah Rukh Khan as producer [on Betaal] was big.”

Aahana also recalled how she knew when she had finally made it in the film industry after meeting Shah Rukh Khan for the first time in a professional setting. She shared, “He was like ‘Hi, I am Shah Rukh Khan’, and I was like ‘Oh my God, that’s Shah Rukh Khan… I did it!’ For me, it was like, ‘I have worked so hard and this person who is the biggest superstar of the country, is introducing himself to me and he knows my name’. For me, that was enough.”

The actor had worked on the 2020 horror series Betal produced by Shah Rukh and his wife Gauri Khan. The Netflix series was co-directed by Patrick Graham and Nikhil Mahajan. It also starred Vineet Kumar Singh and Suchitra Pillai.

Aahana’s latest film is Kajol-starrer Salaam Venky, which is directed by Revathy. The film released in theatres this Friday. Before this, she was seen in India Lockdown, directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, which revolves around the human stories emerging from the COVID-19 lockdown in India. The actor plays a commercial pilot in the film alongside Prateik Babbar, Shweta Basu Prasad and Sai Tamhankar.