Arbaaz Khan: ‘India has a gap in late night chat shows’

Inspired from father Salim Khan’s stories, Arbaaz on how his talk show The Invincibles documents Indian film industry’s history

How would one define Arbaaz Khan’s chat show, The Invincibles? He views it as an oral history of legendary Hindi films and their making. Its inception was driven by the actor-producer’s concern that if such stories are not documented, they will be lost. “The inspiration came from my father [Salim Khan]. He is 85, and so many of his stories need to be shared. The industry can learn so much from them. It’s easy to know about hits and flops, but you need to know what drives people. A lot of their stories are also how they navigated their personal lives, which reflected in their work. I did the pilot episode with my father, and then used it to convince Helen aunty, Waheeda-ji [Rehman] and others,” he states.

While the first season kicked off in 2023, the second edition opened in July with Shabana Azmi. In the course of the season, he will interview Ramesh Sippy, Subhash Ghai and many more. Khan says there is a passionate team helping him pull off a show that goes beyond “getting a headline”; instead, the idea is to understand the person and their process. “We go into a lot of research on what we should ask. Even if it is personal, it isn’t frivolous. For instance, we asked Shabana-ji how she dealt with her husband’s [Javed Akhtar] alcoholism. I sift through the material, choosing what I like and introducing some questions. While I am doing it, I sense what we can go further into, it’s largely spontaneous. In every episode, I discover things I had no idea about. Seniors have pearls of wisdom that you cannot have enough of.”

As the host, Khan believes The Invincibles fills the gap in chat shows in India. “From comments, I [can gauge] the show is going to the youth, who don’t know these stalwarts. India has a major gap in late night chat shows, something like what Jimmy Kimmel does [in the US]. We need to create chat shows that go beyond the surface and hold conversations that stay in public memory. I’m not looking for controversy. If someone has said something that’s political or religious, we are careful. But at the same time, we don’t sanitise these interviews; they are insightful.”

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