Salman Khan has spent four decades dodging questions about marriage. On Tuesday, 14 October 2026, the 60-year-old actor finally gave India a different answer — not about a wife, but about a child. Sitting on Karan Johar’s couch for the premiere of Koffee With Karan Season 9, Khan admitted that he would like to have children of his own someday, a rare moment of openness from one of Hindi cinema’s most guarded stars.
The episode, which began streaming at 7 pm on JioHotstar, set the tone for a season that Johar has already flagged as possibly his last. And it opened with the kind of conversation that made the show famous in the first place: personal, slightly uncomfortable, and impossible to ignore the next morning.
What Salman Khan actually said about fatherhood
Johar, according to NDTV’s report of the episode, asked Khan directly whether he ever missed having children of his own, given how close he is to his nieces and nephews. Khan agreed. Having children, he made clear, is something he would still like to experience.
It was not a throwaway remark. The actor went further, laying out the arithmetic of late fatherhood with the bluntness his fans know well. “If my kids are born in the next 4-5 years, I will still have time to play with them for the next 20-25 years,” he said on the episode.
For a star whose unmarried status has fuelled interview questions for decades, the admission landed with weight. Khan has rarely spoken at length about starting a family, even as his relationships remained a fixture of Bollywood gossip columns. On Johar’s couch, the subject was no longer deflected — it was embraced.
The 2023 comments that foreshadowed this moment
None of this came entirely out of nowhere. In 2023, during an appearance on the courtroom-style interview show Aap Ki Adalat, Khan revealed that he had actively considered having a child but ran into a legal wall.
“I had plans. It wasn’t for a daughter-in-law, but for a child. But according to Indian laws, it’s not possible. Now, let us see what can be done,” he said at the time.
He even pointed to a precedent sitting across from him on the Koffee With Karan set. Johar welcomed twins through surrogacy, and Khan referenced that route three years ago. “That’s what I was trying to do. But that law may have changed, so let’s see,” he said in the Aap Ki Adalat interview.
He also acknowledged then that fatherhood would mean more than a child alone — it would mean a wife, and the time commitment of being present as a child grows up. On Tuesday’s premiere, the sentiment clearly had not faded. If anything, it had sharpened.
The injuries behind the end of the shirtless era
Fatherhood was only half of the premiere’s revelations. The episode also saw Khan look back at his famous shirtless screen image — the one built across films like Maine Pyar Kiya, Wanted and Dabangg — and admit that injuries, not choice, took it away from him.
Asked how he stays fit in his sixties, Khan credited discipline and lifestyle changes. “A lot of hard work. A lot of sacrifices. I just added a lot of good things to my life and reduced every bad thing,” he told Johar, per The Times of India.
Then came the harder part. “For the people who have been die-hard fans of shirtless me, okay, there was a phase in my life because of a lot of injuries and stuff like that. It was unfair on them. No matter how old you are, it is unfair on them to see me like that. My head was broken; some hernia stuff was there. My shoulder was messed up. And all this came from ‘Sultan’. Knee and back, and then trigeminal neuralgia, then the aneurysm. That is not any justification for how I was looking. I should not have let go for that time.”
It is a striking list. Sultan, the 2016 wrestling drama, demanded a physical transformation that Khan now says left him with lasting damage — a broken head injury, hernia, a messed-up shoulder, knee and back problems, trigeminal neuralgia and an aneurysm. What fans read as a star letting himself go, he frames as the aftermath of a film that took more from his body than it gave back.
His regret is specific: not the injuries themselves, but the period when he stopped fighting them. “I should not have let go for that time,” he said.
What’s next for Salman Khan on screen
The premiere arrived at a busy moment in Khan’s working life. He is currently hosting Bigg Boss 20, the reality franchise he has fronted for years.
On the film front, two projects are lined up. The first is Mathrubhumi, directed by Apoorva Lakhia and co-starring Chitrangda Singh, though its release date has not been announced. The second is Monster, directed by Vamshi Paidipally, with Nayanthara in the female lead.
Beyond those, Khan is reportedly in talks with the filmmaker duo Raj & DK for a superhero film — but nothing has been made official, and he has not signed any other projects yet.
Why this season of Koffee With Karan matters more than usual
There is a shadow over the couch this time. Johar has said that Season 9, which launched on 14 October, is “most definitely” his last — a remark that has turned the new season into something of a farewell tour for Indian television’s most influential celebrity talk show.
An opinion column in The Indian Express published alongside the premiere argued that the show’s later seasons lost their spark less because of Johar and more because of what Bollywood itself became: stars overexposed on social media, managed by a common PR machine, and trained to never say the “wrong” thing. The column credited Johar with changing the celebrity interview in India forever when the show launched in November 2004 — making stars more human and more astral at the same time, and pairing guests from Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol to Deepika Padukone and Sonam Kapoor, Ranveer Singh and Ranbir Kapoor.
Whether or not one buys that argument, the Season 9 opener made the case for the show’s enduring value on its own. A 60-year-old superstar, asked a question he has sidestepped for thirty years, chose to answer it honestly. That is precisely what the show was built to do — and precisely what a PR-managed celebrity circuit struggles to produce anywhere else.
New episodes of Koffee With Karan Season 9 stream every Wednesday at 7 pm, exclusively on JioHotstar. If the premiere is any indication, the farewell season intends to go out asking the questions nobody else dares to.
FAQ
When and where does Koffee With Karan Season 9 stream?
The season premiered on 14 October at 7 pm, exclusively on JioHotstar. New episodes stream every Wednesday at 7 pm.
What did Salman Khan say about having children on the show?
On the Season 9 premiere, Salman Khan agreed when Karan Johar asked whether he missed having children of his own, saying fatherhood is something he would like to experience. He added that if his kids were born in the next 4-5 years, he would still have 20-25 years to play with them.
Is Season 9 Karan Johar's last Koffee With Karan?
Karan Johar has said that Season 9 is “most definitely” his last, according to The Indian Express, making the new season a potential farewell for the show he launched in November 2004.
What health issues did Salman Khan reveal on the episode?
Khan said injuries from Sultan left him with a broken head injury, hernia, a messed-up shoulder, knee and back problems, trigeminal neuralgia and an aneurysm, and admitted he should not have let his fitness slip during that period.