When asked if Salman Khan is always late on sets, Emraan Hashmi said, “He has his own schedule.”

Emraan Hashmi played the villain opposite Salman Khan in Tiger 3.

Actor Emraan Hashmi, who was last seen in Salman Khan‘s Tiger 3 and the Sara Ali Khan-starrer Ae Watan Mere Watan, is promoting his web-series Showtime. In a recent interview, the actor opened up about his first meeting with Shah Rukh Khan in 2003, years before the superstar went on to produce his Netflix series Bard of Blood. Emraan also reflected on working with Salman on Tiger 3, and sheepishly responded to a question about whether the ‘Bhai’ of Bollywood is always late to work, as has been rumoured.

Talking about his meeting with SRK, Emraan said in an interview with The Lallantop, “I first met SRK on the sets of my film Murder, when he had come to meet (Mahesh) Bhatt sahab. So I hadn’t actually met him, I was inside, giving my shot, and he waved to me and showed me a ‘thumbs-up’ sign and said something like, ‘You are doing well’. I don’t know if he had seen Footpath (2003 film) but that was very encouraging for me, because I am a very big SRK fan and that’s how my first meeting with SRK was.”

“After that when Bard of Blood was made, I had gone to his house, we sat and watched some episodes together. We also discussed the show because he was the producer of the show, and his observations, his points, were very important to us, very valuable for us,” the actor added.

Emraan then discussed his equation with his Tiger 3 co-star Salman Khan. On answering a fan question on whether Salman Khan is always late on set, Emraan chuckled and responded, “I’d say he has his own schedule. He has his one timing and schedule, but he is one of the best people to work with. He is very fond of me, I am very fond of him.”

“We are not friends but there is mutual respect. When we were shooting together, sitting together on sets, it felt like I was talking to a friend. He is a lot more senior than me but we both have grown around the same neighborhood of Bandra, we also talk about fitness. It is easy to converse with me, there are times when you feel a certain kind of ease with some people, I feel that way with Salman” Emraan concluded.

In the recent past, several of Salman’s former colleagues have spoken about his tardiness. While Kubbra Sait told Bollywood Hungama that Salman would show up to the Ready sets in the afternoon and call for lunch before starting work, Heeramandi actor Jason Shah recalled that on Partner, the producer would plead with Salman to get some work done after waiting for him all morning. Grusha Kapoor, on the other hand, told Siddharth Kannan that she became very impatient with Salman after being made to wait for hours on the sets of the 1999 film Jaanam Samjha Karo.