01 June,2026 06:10 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Emraan Hashmi. Pic via Instagram
Actor Emraan Hashmi has often opened up about his infamous 'serial kisser' image that has followed him through much of his career. Now, his publicist revealed how that image came into being, adding that it was part of a carefully planned marketing strategy during the actor's early years in the industry.
Speaking on Soha Ali Khan's podcast All About Her, PR professional Parul Gossain opened up about his image and how Emraan himself was never particularly fond of the image.
"Emraan Hashmi is so fed up with that image. He has given me a go-ahead to say it," Parul said, adding, "There was Emraan Hashmi. He has no interest in PR. I remember Mahesh Bhatt saying that we have to do PR for him now. I told him that all his stories about kissing girls always get picked up. Why don't we create an image for him that he kisses everybody in every film, all the girls in every film? So Mahesh Bhatt said, 'Isme baat toh hai.'"
She further added how the actor was initially hesitant about the idea due to concerns about how his wife would react. "So we told Emraan. He said, 'Yaar, Parveen, my wife, will kill me.' I said, 'You get her and I'll have a word with her.' He said, 'Acha theek hai,' because he can't go against Mahesh Bhatt basically. I told her that this is just a marketing campaign. This is not his thing. He is very against it. I told her that it works for us really well because we have so many films lined up with him. But if we don't have a story, how do we do it? And it worked for him, especially in B and C centres. It worked for him tremendously," she recalled.
Interestingly, Emraan himself once admitted how he and his team actively leaned into the image during the early years. During an interview with Hindustan Times, Emraan had shared, "They were commercial successes, and I was also raking in that image. We were playing up to it through the marketing. The press was in on it."
He added, "After a decade of doing it, I realised that the audience changes. They say that every 10 to 14 years, it switches. The next generation comes to the theatres. It's very important to reinvent yourself for that fresh audience. And every character, every mould, reaches the saturation point. You can only juice it out as much. And I realised I juiced it to the hilt, yeah. So it was very important to me to switch."
Despite moving over the image and doing varied roles, the actor admitted that questions about his kissing scenes still follow him.
"What happens is that when you have such a strong image, especially in a very conservative society like India, they will still hold on to it. Like, if you see people from the press conference the other day, there was still a question about the kiss that pops up. But that's India. They are still obsessed with it," he shared.
