Did Esha Gupta Date Hardik Pandya? Actor Says They Were 'Talking For A Couple Of Months'
Years after rumours linked Bollywood actress Esha Gupta with cricketer Hardik Pandya, the actress has finally addressed the long-standing speculation.
Years after rumours linked Bollywood actress Esha Gupta with cricketer Hardik Pandya, the actress has finally addressed the long-standing speculation. While whispers of a short-lived romance between the two first emerged in 2018, neither party had publicly acknowledged it, until now.
Esha Gupta on whether she ever dated Hardik Pandya
In a recent chat with Siddharth Kannan, Esha candidly revealed that while there was some connection between her and Hardik, it never developed into a full-blown relationship. “Yeah, for some time we were talking. I don’t think we were dating, but yeah, we were talking for a couple of months. We were at that ‘maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t’ stage. It ended before we even reached the dating stage. So it wasn’t dating-dating. We met once or twice, that’s it. So yeah, as I said, it was a couple of months and then it ended,” she said.
Esha says it wasn’t meant to be
When asked whether there was ever a chance they could have become a couple, Esha responded with clarity. “Maybe it could have happened. But I don’t think it was meant to be. Even before that, those poor guys were already facing bad luck after saying some things on live TV. And by then, we had already stopped talking.”
Esha was referring to the controversy surrounding Hardik’s infamous appearance on 'Koffee With Karan' alongside KL Rahul, a moment that stirred massive backlash due to Pandya’s controversial remarks. Interestingly, Esha says she remained unfazed when the episode aired.
"By then, I had become thick-skinned. When Karan Johar’s episode aired, it didn’t affect me. And those poor guys were already going through so much, what good would it have done if I had made a big deal out of it?”
Esha Gupta says she and Hardik Pandya were not compatible
She also shared how things gradually fizzled out between them, with no drama or bad blood involved. “By the time that episode came out, it had already phased out. We just realised that we are not the same, not compatible enough. And everyone has a type. More than the limelight, I like family and real life. Of course I love my work — without the camera, there would be no Esha Gupta. But at the end of the day, I like going home and asking my mom what’s going on, getting scolded by her. I like all that. I can’t deal with waking up every morning and thinking ‘Oh my God,’ and my husband and I praising ourselves for how good-looking we are — I can’t handle that.”
To clarify, Esha said that she wasn’t making a personal dig at Hardik Pandya, but was pointing to the broader industry culture she finds unrelatable. “Nothing against Hardik Pandya, as I said, it was just the talking stage. You know how there are stages? We never even got to the proper meeting stage. I don’t think we were compatible, so things never progressed. It’s not that there was something lacking in him or me — we were just very different. And in a month or two, even he realised I wasn’t his type, and I realised he wasn’t mine," she said.
Back in 2018, reports suggested that the two had met at a party and instantly hit it off. Around the same time, following Hardik’s controversial appearance on 'Koffee With Karan', Esha had also spoken out against his remarks, calling them “misogynistic.”
Top Headlines
