Too Much with Kajol and Twinkle: How India has a case of celeb talk show fatigue

The question begs to be asked… Did we really need another celeb-led talk show? Every other streaming giant, TV channel, news outlets and production houses have their take on the celeb interview. Koffee with Karan; The Great Indian Kapil Show; even the formerly ‘political’ Lallantop has now a robust celeb avatar; Mashable’s The Bombay Journey… The list unfortunately goes on and on. Film celebrities are everywhere. Come an impending film release, and we see the same duo of the lead film stars doing the rounds of the podcasts, TV channels, radio channels, influencer collaborations and are plastered on the few inches of newsprint that have survived. Same questions, same answers, and the same boring templates.

In the pre-digital age access to film celebrities was a rare currency. Their interviews were sacrosanct. Ask any journalist worth their salt, about the long hours spent waiting outside studios, hotel rooms and vanity vans. Question the pre-Instagram days paparazzi, about that one elusive shot of the actor. The conversations between the actor and interviewer were a hard-fought battle! To transform the snippets into fluid, riveting copy, was where the magic happened. Subsequently those articles and images would be cut out from magazines and newspapers and pasted onto bedroom walls and scrapbooks. Information about one’s favourite star was punctiliously gathered. An autograph was a prized possession to be flaunted around.

Stars came home

Things paced up a bit when the Televised Celeb interview took shape. Star Yaar Kalakaar (1997-1999) had Farida Jalal shedding her motherly screen persona for a glammed up one. She made celebs sing and dance to her tune in front of a studio audience. The same year there was Movers and Shakers, with Shekhar Suman co-opting the Western ‘Late Night Talk Show’ format for an Indian audience, replete with a live band. He sandwiched celebs between comic routines (often political), satirical takes on current events and his guest list includes Javed Akhtar, Tabu, Suniel Shetty, Rani Mukerji and Sonu Nigam. Stars were accessible, almost.

They shed their on-screen act and were seen humming a tune or two, or answering some cheeky questions, or even sharing a joke with the host. Jeena Issi Ka Naam Hai, hosted in its first instalment by late actor Farooq Sheikh, did the unthinkable. It got family, friends, and contemporaries of the celebs and presented them in an unfiltered, almost family-get together scenario. That’s where we first saw Shah Rukh Khan’s non-filmy friends from Delhi; the rare bond comedian Johnny Lever and Mehmood; and even the larger-than-life Sanjay Dutt took a back seat when an episode featured his father, actor Sunil Dutt. The warm, affable Urdu-speaking Farooq Sheikh was the glue that kept all the moving parts together seamlessly.

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The show was a veritable hit, and people waited every week to see who would turn up on their screens. And then reality TV was still ‘real enough’ and not followed the script that they do now. The show humanised a pantheon of film stars, who otherwise seemed made of star dust alone. It gave them a sneak-peek into the lives of these matinee idols, but without shredding away their need of privacy, or being voyeuristic.

Rendezvous with Simi Garewal flipped the script on celebrity talk shows. Garewal, clad in all white, created a very intimate setting without a live studio audience. She got the stars all comfortable with her ease and charm and then asked deeply personal questions. We saw Amitabh Bachchan, an icon of the Hindi heartland, speaking flawless English, while his wife, Jaya Bachchan, openly answered if he was a better father or husband.

These snippets of information and glimpses into the personal lives of actors and celebs were hard won for the legion of fans. It gave them a taste that kept them hooked. The mystique lived on. The epic-ness of their stature only got magnified, the obsession was fed with intrigue and inaccessibility.

Starry starry screens

Then came a shift nobody saw coming. Cut to 2020. The world shut down with Covid 19, and as major screenings were pushed to streaming platforms and stars were isolated to their homes, the digital interview became the new normal. They were seen on every available platform, talking from the comforts of their bedroom. Sadly, the trend hasn’t died. They are still everywhere. Blame it on the pressures and demands of marketing teams, but today’s stars have to spend more time promoting a film than they spent making it. Every couple of weeks a new celeb-led podcast sprouts up.

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Actor Soha Ali Khan is the latest to have joined the bandwagon, with a podcast ‘All About Her’, featuring guests like TV Personality Malaika Arora and celebrity nutrition expert Rujuta Diwekar. And while the two made good points, it was nothing they haven’t shared before. Hosting a celeb talk show seems like something most people want to tick off their bucket list. From the ilk of Anupam Kher (The Anupam Kher Show – Kucch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai), Farah Khan (Tere Mere Beach Mein) Kareena Kapoor Khan (What Women Want), Neha Dhupia (No Filter Neha) …. It’s endless. Even actors and comics with established careers have chosen this low-hanging fruit. Zakir Khan, too, dabbled on Prime Time with Aapka Apna Zakir.

Can there ever be too much of a good thing? In this case, yes, definitely, and it leads up to the average fan suffering from a case of celeb fatigue! We now know everything about our stars — what they eat, what they wear, where they are — aided by them giving us life updates on their social media. Maybe it’s time to bring back the mystique, the aloofness. Take a leaf out of Adam Driver’s book, who prizes his privacy above anything else. In this gilded age of excess, less is the new more. Fame is now a commodity that can be cultivated on demand, true influence, therefore, might only belong to those who cultivate mystery by stepping out of the spotlight.