13 July,2024 08:00 AM IST | Mumbai | Mohar Basu
Siddharth Aalambayan’s first concept was to take young entrepreneurs on car rides where they pitched their ideas to VC. When it failed, he turned to celebrities
Celebrity chat shows have long been a staple of Indian entertainment, offering a glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous. But gone are the days of lightweight gossip and predictable rapid-fire questions. Today's chat shows are taking a deep dive, evolving in format and structure to offer a more nuanced and engaging experience viewer experience.
We're seeing a shift from typical celebrity chit-chat. Actor-producer Arbaaz Khan's show, The Invincibles, exemplifies this, opting for an oral history format with legendary figures such as Shabana Azmi and Asha Parekh, preserving their invaluable industry experiences. "The conversation is going beyond movies," says Nikhil Taneja who in his series, Be A Man Yaar, tackles the complex topic of toxic masculinity with a diverse range of voices such as Kartik Aaryan, Javed Akhtar, and Bhuvan Bam. "I had this idea since 2019 but it came about when I realised that young men talk about love and heartbreak when they get a safe space. Boys discuss how they have never been loved in their life or hugged in their life. They have not received physical intimacy from parents or friends. Every boy would speak about it and yet no boy would extend a safe space. Girls have sisterhood. Men go into shells."
Thus came along his show, which is on season 2 now. "I wanted to bring out emotionally rich conversations," he says. "The most iconic men showing their vulnerable side could be a major catalyst. I first went to men I knew and was sure would be okay - Vicky Kaushal, Karan Johar, Kartik Aaryan. I have to maintain a safe space, and also tell them my story. This season, Imran Khan spoke about his mental health and I told him about mine. In the past year, people have come up to me not simply to praise the show, but to tell me the exact parts of the conversation that made them feel seen or heard."
There's a wave of fresh ideas because the audience is easily bored. A superstar, whom we recently interviewed, got into a conversation about how draining promotional rounds for films can be. "You sit from 10 am to 6 pm," she said, "talking about the same things over and over again. While it may be repetitive to you, you can't reflect this to the next interviewer because they are hearing it for the first time. As the volume of media has widened, I feel the fatigue. I enjoy doing these offbeat chat series where they want to know if I like my kadhi chawal with or without pakoda."
Publicist Ebrahim Contractor, founder of Pearl Media that handles celebrities such as Huma Qureshi and Diljit Donsanjh among others, tells us that actors enjoy the focus on their authenticity. "Social media," he explains, "has changed the way celebrities are viewed. With legacy media, celebs could connect to fans and audience in a traditional sense. But social media lets the audience participate in a conversation; earlier, they lacked a platform to express their views about stars. This creates a need for the celebrity to be authentic; surface-level answers in an interview get called out. Today's interviews capture moments in cinema and the celebrities at that juncture in their lives. It's a positive step even from a public relations perspective as audiences can spot staged answers and images a mile away."
RelationSh!t with Sumukhi Suresh and Raunaq Rajani, featuring stars such as Vidya Balan and Imran Khan, catches stars at their funniest. Rajani likes the show completely unscripted. "As comics, the most fun we have is in green rooms," he says, "So the idea was, why not bring in a celebrity and see how that shapes us. It's exciting to see actors come across as a real person as opposed to six boring things their PR person asked them to say, and the movie PR person ordered they must. Vidya Balan was so chill. There were no questions, no pointers, no no-go zone - just a bunch of people chatting. Her team didn't ask to see the footage; we uploaded it directly."
Rajani has a word of caution: "If you are criminally unlikeable as a person, stick to what the PR person asked you to say." A celebrity manager didn't allow her client to go on the show. "I cannot trust this actor to go to a roast and not come back crying," he says. "â¦And for that matter, most young actors. It's not about bad or good, it's about preference. Shah Rukh Khan can go unscripted; many young actors get nervous, say more than they should, and get unwarranted hate."
The hunger for authenticity and content beyond the promotional cycle feeds creativity. YouTube, a major platform for these shows, allows for engagement different from traditional television. Shows such as Bombay Journey take viewers on a car ride through the city with celebrities.
"We worked for a long time and understood early on that people are bored of talk shows," host Siddharth Aalambayan tells us, "We are what they bracket as concept shoots. The studio setting isn't working anymore. Taking a celebrity on a car ride started off as an idea for young entrepreneurs to pitch their start-up ideas to VCs [Venture Capitalists]. It didn't work out then. We adapted it to bring in Mumbai for flavour."
This took away intrusiveness of chat shows, with its standing crew. "You don't get space with the star," says Aalambayan. "Also, I learnt from a star that when two people are looking at a third thing, it gives subconscious thoughts a voice. You have to create an environment. I don't need quotes or headlines; I want human connection. I have to thank Saif [Ali Khan] for taking a punt on us. He was our first guest after the episode before that was cancelled on the day of shoot. He graciously did the shoot and said really funny things that went viral. I really enjoy talking to actors who don't have guard rails. They are who they are and unafraid to be so."
