By Sharanya Gopinathan

Oh, Tiger.

Tiger Shroff’s latest statements aren’t exactly shocking. Remember the fiasco that took place after he gave an interview to Rediff around the time of the release of his movie Baaghi:A Rebel for Love? In the interview, he said that he wants to get married to a housewife-type girl from the village who should stay at home, keep the house clean and give him home-cooked food. He also said he wants a massage when he gets home from work so that he can “get relaxed”. After the interview was published, he denied that he had ever made those statements, prompting Rediff to clarify that they had a recording of the interview, which they would be happy to share with Tiger to refresh his memory.

Now, in an interview to Mumbai Mirror on the subject of one of his upcoming movies, he was asked about his two female co-stars. He responded by saying “I don’t really care about the padding around me. It’s the script and my character that matter.”. Its pretty indicative of his approach to movies, which seem like they’re meant to be all about him, and to the way he thinks about his female co-stars specifically, and perhaps, women in general. As the Huffington Post points out, it’s important to remember that padding is something extra, unnecessary and superfluous used to bulk up the main attraction.

Of course, while he didn’t specifically refer to female actors, it feels like he couldn’t be referring to much else, since the question was about his two female co-actors, and he hasn’t yet done a movie with a male lead other than him.

It reminds me of something documentary filmmaker and founder of our favourite Agents of Ishq, Paromita Vohra, said in an interview with The Spool about the appeal of Shah Rukh Khan: that he’s a lover, and one of the very few leading Bollywood actors about whom you can say that despite being the “lead” and the name that’s most widely publicised whenever he’s involved in a movie, he has a quality that makes you remember who the female co-star, the “heroine”, is, and this says a lot about his particular brand of sexiness. We’ll leave it to you to decide what that says about the sex appeal of Tiger Shroff.