On Koffee With Karan 9, the actor walked back his famous boast about never having a flop, saying he has since learned to let his work do the talking.
Varun Dhawan has finally addressed the comment that has followed him around for eight years. On the new season of Koffee With Karan, he brought up his own infamous answer from 2018 and more or less conceded that it backfired.
Back on Koffee With Karan Season 6 in November 2018, Karan Johar asked Varun whether he'd swap careers with Ranbir Kapoor or Ranveer Singh. Varun said no to both, pointing out that he hadn't tasted a box-office failure at that point while the other two had. It was a confident line at the time, and a widely discussed one.
Fast forward to the new episode, and Karan dug the old quote back up. Varun didn't want to touch the numbers this time around. "I don't want to correct you. That would feel like a flex now," he told Karan when pressed. Janhvi Kapoor, sitting in, noted that the hit count being referenced had actually climbed to 11 since then. Varun agreed, but still refused to turn it into a victory lap.
What he did want to talk about was the jinx. "What I have realised over time, after maturing a little, is that the only flex one should do is with their work. Many years ago, I came here and flexed about how many hits I had. Somewhere, it jinxed me or something," he said.
He then pointed to Ajay Devgn as the template he's trying to follow now. "When you are successful or something becomes a success, sometimes it is better to be like Ajay Devgn. He is someone I have seen treat you the same way through success and failure. It is amazing," Varun said, adding that he'd rather not flex at all going forward.
The timing of the original remark matters here. In 2018, Varun had Student of the Year, Main Tera Hero, Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, ABCD 2, Badrinath Ki Dulhania and Judwaa 2 behind him, a genuinely clean run. The quote resurfaced hard in December 2024 after Baby John underperformed, with social media gleefully pointing out that the man who once said he'd never had a flop had finally had one. The "jinx" framing online was half-joking, but it stuck.
Varun's new answer reads less like damage control and more like someone who's had years to sit with an old clip going viral for the wrong reasons. Whether this episode actually puts the 2018 soundbite to rest is another matter. Given how often Koffee With Karan guests get asked to relitigate their old quotes, don't be shocked if this one comes up again the next time a Varun Dhawan film opens big, or doesn't.
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