Actress Radhika Apte, a self-described Shah Rukh Khan admirer, has commented on how Bollywood romantic films from earlier decades shaped audience expectations of love and desire. In a recent interview, Apte reflected on rewatching some of Khan's older films and expressed discomfort at scenes she once found romantic, noting that refusal or resistance from female characters was frequently framed as part of the courtship rather than a boundary to be respected.

Apte observed that male persistence in chasing women was routinely presented as romantic rather than intrusive, and acknowledged that her teenage self had internalized these narratives as desirable. She expanded her critique beyond Khan's work to discuss broader patterns in Hindi cinema, noting that desire has historically been portrayed through a male-centric lens, with female characters often sexualized while simultaneously expected to embody moral ideals. Apte argued that this contradiction—simultaneously commodifying and idealizing women on screen—represents a core problem in how the industry has constructed female representation.