Dev Patel is a huge fan of Shah Rukh Khan. The Oscar nominee, who is doing the promotional rounds for his directorial debut Monkey Man, revealed that a 1997 film starring Shah Rukh Khan had a huge impact on him as a viewer. The film was Koyla, which was directed by Rakesh Roshan and starred Shah Rukh as a mute character. (Also read: Dev Patel says Shah Rukh Khan films are his favourite, shares why he cast Sobhita Dhulipala in Monkey Man)

What Dev said

Speaking with Draw Your Box in an interview, a snippet of which was uploaded on X by fan pages, Dev shared his memories of watching the film and how its images stayed with him long after. He said: “I remember a movie. You know, I don’t even remember the plot too well, because I watched it when I was really young, but it was Shah Rukh Khan and this movie Koyla. And he was like, at these red eyes and he was drenched in sweat and he had this, like kind of mullet haircut and this sword and it was like a, you know, a brutal revenge epic where he’d lost his voice by being forced to swallow hot coals and it was like, it’s kind of got it all. It’s kind of, you know, like me in a way. My identity is kind of, it’s been formed by all of these influences.”

Koyla was a 1997 action thriller film directed by Rakesh Roshan. It starred Shah Rukh Khan Madhuri Dixit and Amrish Puri in lead roles.

More details

If this is not proof enough of Dev’s reverence for the Bollywood star, he had mentioned Shah Rukh’s films a few days ago during a fan interaction. It was during the recent Reddit AMA session, where a fan asked, “What are your favorite Bollywood films? Any of them inspire your writing/direction for Monkey Man?” To this, Dev replied, “Anything Shah Rukh Khan does.”

Monkey Man stars Dev in the lead, along with Sobhita Dhulipala, Sikandar Kher, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar, Adithi Kalkunte, and Makarand Deshpande among others. The official synopsis of the film reads, “After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.”

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