The nepotism debate has stretched far too much ever since Kangana Ranaut‘s brutally honest statements on Koffee With Karan 5. Karan Johar was caught in the centre of a sticky web – and there has been no looking back ever since!
Naturally, KJo is fed up with the allegations, and in his latest blog post, he defended his casting choices, and said that everyone is guilty of nepotism. Here are a few excerpts:
We’re not NGOs! We are businesses with bottom lines and budgets. And tomorrow if I want to launch Shah Rukh Khan’s son because he’s Shah Rukh Khan’s son and I believe I can gain from it, why won’t I? I run a company, it’s a balance of commerce and art, and both matter.
While we’re on the subject, may I point out that while we can (and have) put the star on screen, we cannot make the audience arrive. So if it is a nepotistic world, we’re not the only ones guilty of it. Taken a look at any entertainment website recently? They’re full of star kids. It’s all about Sara (Ali Khan) and Jhanvi (Kapoor) and Aryan (Khan) and Aarav (Kumar). They step out and they’re photographed, they’re the ultimate clickbait.
He also took a stand for Alia Bhatt being launched by him:
Yes, I have launched Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan, and yes, maybe you can say nepotism played a part. You can argue that there was proximity and I leveraged it, that there were relationships at play which were factored. David Dhawan was, and is, a friend. I took his son on as an AD as a favour to that friend. And then I saw talent. And then I platformed it. When it came to Alia, I wasn’t even talking to Mahesh Bhatt! I’ve even gone on record saying we had issues. We had auditioned 5,000 people and she was one of them. If there was anyone better than Alia Bhatt, she would have been in the movie, but there wasn’t. She just stood out. Maybe her name played a role in why, but I think her body of work already proves that’s not it.
Well said, Karan! We hope this ends the argument!