Suhana Khan on growing up a star kid: “I hated the attention”
Over the last decade at Vogue, we have often scheduled shoots around the weather, the availability of locations, and even movie schedules, but this was perhaps the first time we scheduled a shoot around exam prep. But there’s a first time for everything. My first meeting with cover girl Suhana Khan was at this Vogue photoshoot, which was also her first-ever magazine shoot. Not that anyone there would have guessed it. The ease with which the 18-year-old conducted herself belied the lack of experience. The camera, it seemed, was an old and familiar friend.
Styling her was Anaita Shroff Adajania, Vogue’s fashion director and long-time friend of Suhana’s father, actor Shah Rukh Khan. “Suhana has the same quiet confidence that her mother had all those years ago. What I loved about her was that she walked in without an entourage, and held her ground. For me, it wasn’t about shooting Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter. It was exciting to work with a young raw amazing girl. Suhana has quite a spark—and everyone on the set picked up on that energy,” says Shroff Adajania, who now has the distinction of styling three members of the Khan family for this magazine.
Suhana’s excitement is infectious, and I find myself taken in by her enthusiasm as we chat over a cup of tea at her parents’ house in Mumbai, watching the sun set over the Arabian Sea. “I absolutely loved shooting this cover. Especially the dancing shots. I love dancing. It was so much fun. I was excited when my parents brought it up. I wanted to say yes straight away, but they wanted me to think about it—this is a very public thing. They wanted me to gain confidence from the experience, not lose it,” she says. Confidence isn’t something this teenager needs to worry about, at least not in front of the camera.
DANCE LIKE NO ONE’S WATCHING
In Mumbai on a short break, Suhana returns to her other life as a student in England the following week. Her school, a private boarding school nestled in the leafy suburbs of London, has a 160-year legacy and is no stranger to young achievers: author Neil Gaiman and Formula One world champion Mike Hawthorn are some of the famous alumni. “Moving away at age 16 was the best decision of my life. Living in a different environment and meeting so many new people helped me gain a lot of confidence. It’s about being able to do the little things, like walk on the street or take the train—stuff that was so hard to do in Mumbai. But living away also made me appreciate home so much more.”
This year, along with her classmates, she will sit the international baccalaureate exam and graduate from school. Next step: university. Hopefully, to study acting. “There’s so much to learn, and one way to do it is to start [working] early, but first I want to go to university and finish studies,” says Suhana, echoing the sentiments of her father, who has made no secret of his desire for his children to get an education before they embark upon their careers.
Suhana’s 21-year-old brother Aryan is already studying filmmaking in Los Angeles. The siblings are close, and Suhana plans to join her brother over the summer to do a short course in acting. Like every other teenager, her plan is to build a portfolio that is strong enough to get her into a good university. Unlike every other teenager, though, she’s dead certain of her future career—acting. “I don’t think there was any one moment when I decided. Since I was young, I’d do all these accents and impressions. But my parents only realised I was serious about acting when they saw a performance of mine for the first time. I was playing Miranda in a school performance of The Tempest.”
THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL TOO FAR
In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it’s the relationship between Miranda, the only female character to appear on stage, and her magician-father Prospero that propels the plot. Everything Prospero does is out of love for his daughter. It’s an emotion that is quietly reflective in Suhana’s own life. Her father may be the country’s biggest star, but for her he’s just dad. A dad who FaceTimes his daughter at her first shoot. A dad who drops by during her first interview. (“Pretend I’m not here, I just want to hang out with my daughter,” he says.) A dad who massages her aching feet as we talk, completely besotted by his only daughter (“I told you those shoes were nonsense…”).
She tells me her relationship with her father has matured over time, and explains that she’s come to terms with his fame. “I realised quite early on that it was different for us. But I never really thought about my dad being famous. When I was about five, he would come and drop me to school, and people would point and stare. He wasn’t being addressed as Suhana’s dad, which is what I wanted. It confused me. He would want to hug me, and I would push him back in the car. I hated the attention, it made me very self-conscious.”
Over time, she realised that she couldn’t push it away, and she learnt to embrace it. “I realised if I wanted to hug my dad, he’s my dad—I’m just going to hug him.” Shah Rukh admits that his daughter has always been sensitive and emotional, even as a child. “I try not to be different with her than with the boys, but Aryan always tells me I can’t ever be angry with Suhana,” he says. The father of three says his whole life has been about being a good father. “I don’t think parents bring up children, I think children bring up parents. I think they’ve brought us up well. I don’t have many friends, but my kids are my friends—I’m easiest around them. I’m usually very awkward around women, but I’m very close to Suhana—she has said things to me that no woman has ever said to me in my life,” says the star-parent of his daughter.
They are close enough for her to call him her best friend (“For years he nagged me to call him my best friend. Somehow it became true”) and they talk all the time—no subject, be it last-minute exam prep or boyfriends, is off limits. Except—“He hates it when I say I need to pee! Once, I was hanging out on his set, and his AD asked where he was. I mentioned that he’d gone to pee, and he was really annoyed with me!”
In a few years, Suhana will be on a film set of her own. But don’t expect Shah Rukh to launch his own daughter. “Suhana’s not working towards a promise of being cast, she’s working towards being an actor, and she knows that,” he adds. “We have friends who are very well-meaning and think of my kids as their own, and they’re all happy and keen to launch her. Like Karan [Johar]. But I keep insisting that I don’t want them designed as stars, I want them to be launched when they are good-enough actors.”
But Shah Rukh also acknowledges that success like his is probably going to be hard to replicate. “It is difficult to become what I’ve become, but there are billions of factors responsible for my success. Will it happen to everyone? There is no cynicism in this, but they have to get out of my shadow and do their stuff,” he says.
If Suhana feels the pressure of being Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter, then she does a really good job of disguising it. She seems to have a genuine interest in the same industry that her father rules over, but her fascination lies on the other end of the entertainment spectrum: “I don’t think about that. I just want to work hard and finish university first. I want to do things that aren’t mainstream. I know it’s not the best idea. What I love about acting is that I don’t have to be myself, I can be completely different.”
HOLDING IT TOGETHER
With three members of the family scattered across three continents, it’s not always easy to keep in touch, but they make a concerted effort to make it happen. Suhana credits her mum, Gauri, for keeping things together by planning family holidays that are sacrosanct and nonnegotiable. “We know it’s important to spend time together. Mum coordinates all our diaries and plans our holidays, where we just hang out watching movies and playing games. We’re all super competitive, so when we play board games things become super tense!”
But it’s not always fun and games being part of the Khan family, and Suhana admits that the flipside of a famous life is dealing with the trolls. “At home, things are normal and everything is cool, but the challenges are outside. I still find it hard because people feel like they can judge you. Especially on social media. Pictures from my private Instagram account get leaked. There are so many people talking about you. They don’t know you, and they don’t know what they’re talking about, but they’re just talking. And that can mess with your self-confidence. I keep telling myself that haters are going to hate, but I can’t honestly say that I don’t get upset by it. It’s annoying, but I keep telling myself other people have bigger problems.”
Fortunately for Suhana, other than her family, she has an incredible support system in her friends, who completely understand the trappings of her life. Her friends from the Dhirubhai Ambani International School are still her BFFs, as are Ananya Panday (Chunky and Bhavna Pandey’s daughter, who makes her movie debut later this year) and Shanaya Kapoor (actor Sanjay Kapoor and Maheep Kapoor’s daughter). She’s known both girls since they were little, with cute childhood pictures of the trio showing up routinely on Kapoor’s account. Then there are her buddies from boarding school in England. “I’ve lived in two different places, so I have a lot of friends. Friends like Shanaya and Ananya I would trust with my life!” she says, adding that people often tell her that she’s naïve, not ever wanting to see the bad in anyone. But she insists she doesn’t mind this at all. Just like Miranda, she might be an ingénue, but isn’t that what makes her so endearing?
Read the complete interview in Vogue India’s August 2018 issue that hits stands on August 2, 2018
On Suhana, dress, Emilio Pucci.
Photographed by: Errikos Andreou. Styled by Anaita Shroff Adajania
Hair: Yianni Tsapatori/Faze Management. Make-up: Namrata Soni. Photographer’s assistant: Ankit Sharma. Photographer’s agency: DEU: Creative Management. Assistant stylist: Priyanka Parkash. Production: Divya Jagwani; Bindiya Chhabria. Make-up assistant: Richa Jain. Editorial assistant: Janine Dubash
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