Sara Ali Khan admits it bothers her when people think ‘yeh joker hai’, responds to criticism for saying she’s ‘cheap’

Actor Sara Ali Khan spoke about being mocked for her ‘loud’ personality in public and admitted that she was ‘overcompensating’ for the criticism that she received for her work. She also opened up about the comments made about how authentic her middle-class image is, which she first began speaking about during the promotions of her film Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, in which she played a middle-class character.

In an interview with Galatta Plus, Sara said that she is bothered by criticism about her acting, but she doesn’t get affected by comments made about her personality, or anything that she does organically. She did, however, admit that her ‘entertaining persona’ sometimes goes against her. “Because people think I’m funny because people think I’m silly or goofy, they think I can’t be more than that. And I actually am silly and goofy, it comes from an organic space. But then there’s also this flipside.”

Sara said that her family and friends understand that she can be both serious and funny, but the audience doesn’t know her as well and can think, ‘Yeh toh joker hai’. Asked if she’s bothered by attacks made on her personality, Sara said, “That doesn’t bother me at all. The work of mine that’s in the public domain is the filmmaking, so if I’m not hitting the right note as an actor, as a dancer, or in a performance at an award function, and if people don’t like it, then I’ll feel bad. But how I am as a person is my business unless I’m trying to marry one of these people, which I’m not. My personality has always been too atrangi from anybody’s, so I’ve become used to this bach ke raho hat ke raho behaviour in my life.”

Asked if she ever felt the need to overcompensate in public, Sara said, “I used to feel that way, where I was like, ‘It’s very important for people to like me’. I realised it’s a waste of energy because people are very smart. They will understand the difference between a good joke, a good Instagram picture, a hot photoshoot, and a good performance. Forgive yourself if you’ve done work that you’re not proud of, and don’t try to convince yourself into thinking that a loud joke will make up for a bad performance, it won’t.”

Sara said that being an actor is only a ‘part of’ her life, but the idea is to ‘keep growing’ and getting better at her job. “To be honest, if you know it in your heart… If somebody calls me out on something that I know is right… It used to bother me when people would say, ‘She’s too loud’ because I realised that they are right. Because I was trying to overcompensate. But when people were saying she’s pretending to be cheap, it didn’t bother me, because anybody that really knows me will know the truth.”

Recently, Sara also said that she got irritated when she saw others greeting photographers with a ‘namaste’, as she often does. She felt that they were copying her. Sara was most recently seen in the Netflix film Murder Mubarak, and will next be seen in the Prime Video movie Ae Watan Mere Watan.