Ekta Kapoor talks to NDTV: Full transcript

Highlights

• Film producer Ekta Kapoor, who is getting ready for her next Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum, says people have nowe started taking her "seriously" post Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai and The Dirty Picture in conversation with NDTV's Sonia Singh on our show Your Call.
• NDTV: Good evening and welcome to Your Call. Tonight’s special guest is someone who redefined the term power woman in Indian television and she is going to do it with Hindi movies next. Joining me tonight is
• Ekta Kapoor. Let’s just look at some of the highlights of that twenty-year journey.
• It’s fascinating how the biggest heroine of Indian television is somebody who is off-screen. If your life was a television serial, in many ways ups and downs as similar to that, what would be the next twist coming, because Ekta Kapoor always has a plot up her sleeve?
• Ekta Kapoor: Next twist? Would be, I don't know, I think this time I want God to pre-empt. Come on, I can't write them all.
• NDTV: You re-wrote all the roles in Indian television but is it much tougher to do that in Bollywood, which is in a sense is a very male dominated, very star entrenched system oriented industry? How is Ekta Kapoor going to fit into that?
• Ekta Kapoor: You know it’s a big boy's club there. Everyone is going to know, you drink with them, you’re going to hang with them, and I am clearly given the respect because of Dad; and how, how do you get the respect to actually turn into someone saying yes to do a film with you? But I think after Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai and a little more after The Dirty Picture, people took us a little more seriously. A bit too seriously, so we made Kyaa Super Kool Hai Hum.
• NDTV: I am glad that you brought that up because you got ahead and pre-empted the Censor Board, at least, by releasing a latest trailer, not on TV but on the net. So let’s just have a look at the trailer, let’s have a look at that. Ekta, you have thumbed your nose at the censors right there. Especially these beginning lines which say it’s going to be a, kalank on the Indian cinema and how is the Government allowing all this?’ So you are actually going out there and courting controversy aren't you?
• Ekta Kapoor: I'll tell you, that when I showed the promos to Taran Adarsh, he said it’s naughty, but not as bad, you know actually I think we, I am taking, I am taking no pangas with the Censor Board, but I have a lot of movies out there. I can give you examples of which are clearly not naughty, like crass. They deal with sexuality in a little more basic way, and in a more covert way, ‘so covert it’s overt’, if I am not mistaken, to use Sherlock Holmes' line. But you know I think we've got to understand that the viewer out there is ready for a certain kind of entertainment. It’s an adult promo, clearly, clearly catering to the adult viewer. Humour that I think we all have in our homes is, I think, is naughty at times and it doesn’t really get into becoming cheap. So I think what’s the big deal? So I am, I think I'll handle the Censor.
• NDTV: So, how can you make a distinction between crass and cheap because in The Dirty Picture you managed that completely differently? I mean you didn't have anyone saying it was cheap, but you will have people saying this is cheap.
• Ekta Kapoor: See, I don't care as far as some people saying what they feel. As I said.in the beginning of the promo only I have said that there is going to be a lot of people standing there and telling me what I should do or not. But as I said I don't, Dirty Picture was a, the title actually had a subtext which a lot of people didn't get because it will land up again in Censor trouble, which was the dirty picture of the world. The double standards and it was a woman who acted in The Dirty Picture; her life was a success because it was about a survivor, there was no martyr. Clearly we didn't make her cry in the end of it to actually to make it look like a soft story, which is also what shocked people, she was very okay with the sexuality. At that time people got over with it because a lot of people supported the thought. This one I didn't really expect people to. I am actually telling you what the film is all about so it’s your choice. You want to enter the theatre, to laugh, to have fun, see double meaning innuendos. It’s adult, it’s funny and I think if Aamir Khan can do it with Delhi Belly then why can't I?
• NDTV: So, you said that you don't care about some people, but there will be people, some people who will say that see these are the movies, which bring down Bollywood.
• Ekta Kapoor: Wow. My reaction to them is I am really sorry.
• NDTV: I have somebody over the phone now, who wants to ask you a question, the survivor you talked about, someone who you have made the hero. Vidya Balan joins us with the questions.
• Ekta Kapoor: Oh wow. How nice.
• Vidya Balan: Hi Ekta.
• Ekta Kapoor: Hi Vidya
• Vidya Balan: This is very funny to have a conversation like this.
• Ekta Kapoor: I know
• Vidya Balan: I have to ask you a question. Why did you cast me in The Dirty Picture? I know Milan told me that I was your first and last choice. I am very, very flattered by that. Thank you for that. What was it that, obviously it was not that obvious, can't change, I have always been intrigued by this? And just by the way, why have you used only my blouse in Kyaa Super Kool Hai Hum?
• Ekta Kapoor: You know there is a line in Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum, let me answer that first, which says yeh Vidya Balan ka blouse hai, Rs 3 crore mein; this guy Anupam Kher has bought it. Because just your blouse costs Rs 3 crore, now how can I afford you in a small film like Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum? As far as the first question goes, that why did I cast you? Why would I cast anyone else when we are honoured to have you in our industry? You're gorgeous, you are smart, you understand subtext as far as performance goes and you are brave, all these reasons.”
• NDTV: It’s a gamble that really paid off. I mean I think not just even those people whom you love to hate, the critics, I think this was acclaimed both commercially and critically. But I will make that point that you made a hero and people asked that how will Ekta Kapoor in the world of Bollywood, in studios like Yash Raj, where stars are taken on the basis of their last name and not really their acting ability, how will you make it?
• Ekta Kapoor: Even I don't know. My whole idea is that I have to do what I have to do, and constantly shock myself, my viewer. ALT was created so that we don't hurt the mass sensibility of Indian audiences, who attach the family brand like Balaji, not make a Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum. The whole idea of starting ALT is clutter breaking. If I don't break the clutter and make only regular movies then I actually will be very bored. It’s not my scene anyway.
• NDTV: You don't think it will actually cut off the so called regular stars, working with Salman or Shah Rukh Khan?
• Ekta Kapoor: I would do that too. I mean I will work with Shah Rukh, but clearly when he is ready to work with me. And to add to that, to be pushed into the pool, you better learn to swim. If I am not getting big stars it doesn't mean that I am going to stay at home. I am going to make whatever I can make and then survive.”
• NDTV: How will you keep your own identity here, because here, in a sense, you conquered the world of television, but here you are still a small fish in a big pond?
• Ekta Kapoor: Absolutely, I love it. I think with The Dirty Picture they are taking me a little more seriously now. But I am just telling you an incident of pre The Dirty Picture when I went to meet this star, and he is like, what is doing so well on television? So, actually I was like okay, why are you doing movies and I just want to learn something? And you know I was happy about the fact that I was not being taken too seriously. I did not have any expectations on my back. I did not have to stand up and say that I have to give a hit. And that actually opened my mind so much, because, here it was, no one was expecting anything from me. Whatever I did, hit or flop, would be clearly something that I would probably not be judged for. While on television I was living under huge pressure that every show has to be a success. So I actually felt quite relieved.”
• NDTV: Do you find that people feel threatened by you especially in film industry you have had this huge success? Do you think that you are seen as a bit of a threat now, because insecurity is what now, especially something like the Hindi film industry, because insecurity is what they thrive on?
• Ekta Kapoor: Yes it is full of boys, and it is a big boys’ club. Yes, personally and professionally I have always found the male species threatened by me, so I just live with it now.
• NDTV: But one thing which comes out and maybe perhaps in a way when we talk what you've been called, progressive or regressive at the same time, between television and film, the hypocrisy, and especially in urban India, people would say about sex and sexuality, do you think that’s something that you also tend to poke fun at in this whole film?
• Ekta Kapoor: Absolutely. I find any kind of hypocrisy very, very irritating, because you do television and you start judging television, mostly intellectuals do, without even watching it. You are like why women are wearing saris and it’s a same thought like it was in movies. Like Amitabh Bachchan was identified because of the man on the road, but when he hit 10 people it was aspiration. We made these women plumper, they were like local women living in small towns having family issues. That was the identifiable part of it, and they dressed up well. They gave it back in a family discussion, actually took some decision making on their own, which was the aspirational part of it. So it’s actually the same thing and no one could see why are women good or bad. Really, like because it’s about women. It’s high time, when we have a medium where we have the vamp and the heroine woman, and when you have the same happening in movies, where the hero and the villain are dealing with it, and the woman just only dances in songs; in television men do that.
• NDTV: That’s the big difference. Women are the heroes.
• Ekta Kapoor: Absolutely
• NDTV: And men are the eye-candy
• Ekta Kapoor: That’s why I say that boys have to look good on television. The women have to act.
• NDTV: So, how did you, how did you choose, as Ram Kapoor was an unlike hero? And I saw one interesting transition was that okay, we finally saw a make-out scene on Indian television. We wouldn't have seen that perhaps if you were in the Kyunki days. We didn't see that with Tulsi and Mihir. So how come this new Ekta Kapoor decided to let actually a couple make out on TV?
• Ekta Kapoor: In 2008, when I came up with this concept it was like nobody wanted to support me. It was like grown-up romance, older people, who will see it, and said, let’s make it in a village. I said let’s do urban romance; let’s deal with urban issues. Let’s deal with loneliness when you are not married after 35. In India there are people like this and people will identify, because any emotion maybe alien, but you identify with one grain of it if it works. So, I said basic grain of it is nice because you have two people coming together. And then I said why create old, those gorgeous looking women because, because I think the grown up women have a different ideology when it comes to sex appeal. She doesn't really only look at the man with a tanned body or six pack abs, or how should I explain with a sense of humour, men who are really quirky and men who in life probably support you when you need them the most. So I was like let’s experiment and it worked.
• NDTV: And so the huge feedback to that love-making scene, I mean those trending globally on twitter, the feedback you got to that also was extreme.
• Ekta Kapoor: Yes, we couldn't have a romantic scene between two people who are much more mature adults, who have been in a marriage, who've not had any physical contact, actually coming together and not have a kiss. I thought it would look very funny if I had cut to a wall or something like that, and especially on Bade Achche Lagte Hain. I think people forgot, but in a rival channel, we had two men kiss but no one watched it. And we had Ram Kapoor and Sakshi Tanwar do a brief peck on the lips, and I don't know, twitter went mad; people went mad, there were like diverse reactions. I was like we got to do, we got do, I am kind of expecting a same kind of reaction from this promo. I am going to be bitched out majorly.
• NDTV: It’s the Ekta effect I think more than anything else. We went from Vidya, as I said that someone you made a hero now, but what about somebody you made a hero when it all began? Smriti Irani joins me now with this question for you.”
• Smriti Irani: Hi Ekta there was this time when a lot of your shows were pulled off air and many critics called them regressive. But when I saw the shows that replaced them, I saw they were the same old saas-bahu family drama that you have made famous on Indian television, just in a different packaging. So how do you feel today when most of the people are just doing the versions or the family drama you produced, and the same critics who called you regressive end up writing copy versions of what you did on Indian television?
• Ekta Kapoor: I don't know Smriti. I just know that what we did because we started, it all will always find a place in history, the rest can follow suite and can be ‘me too’s’ or spin offs. And as far as I am concerned, I never thought what critics said and I really don't care. Their job is to criticise and analyse, and my job is to do my job. That is something what Steve Jobs said. Research is for people who want to see what is happening. What we do is tell people what they want, not learn from them what they want.
• NDTVa Singh: And with Smriti and Tulsi, how did that happen? I mean, I think she still, 20 years on, holds an iconic place in Indian television .
• Ekta Kapoor: Absolutely. I saw her in my office, she was wearing jeans and that too 'slim-fit' jeans, tuck in shirt and this girl was so decent. And I saw her standing out, she was a bit nervous but she’d done Miss India before and she smiled. And when I saw her smile, she was a raw actor, but her Hindi was perfect. And she seemed like a girl, who if she cried, because when she did the audition she had tears in her eyes, you felt bad for her. I said that this girl will make India cry and that's what I want. I want her to smile and people should support her. It became so bad that my Amma, who used to look after me, was in my house at that time. She's no more, and she came to me and said I want to meet Tulsi, and then she went to office, she blessed her and started crying. So I was like actually seeing the effect she had on people.
• NDTV: And yet, after all that, the height where it started, you did another coup in a way and just removed her as Tulsi. What, drives you?
• Ekta Kapoor: Nothing drives me, but there were many other issues then, but more than anything else it was about, you know, you always will realise that life is a circle. Every thought is a circle. I can create between content and if I don't constantly re-invent myself and my shows whatever once worked will become stagnant, will stagnate. So, Smriti had to leave the show. People had to have an outcry to have her back, and when she came back in the show, it was accepted that we’ve never even seen when she first came.
• NDTV: But how do you deal with all the baggage which comes with this? Like people who say you're dominating and how you treat stars like daily wageworkers, you're basically the real star, there's no other star in Balaji.
• Ekta Kapoor: No, there are many stars. But more than anything else, I think now I like, there's a line in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, that, this is a scene where Shoaib says that I never keep my gun loaded, my reputation is good enough.
• NDTV: That is an interesting aspect because many a point you said that people must think you’re a split personality because people call you regressive on television, progressive in film. In real life also people will ask about the contradiction that you are a very religious, spiritual person, that your film seems very sensual in your face, very modern, or as people put it, extra modern. Do you think that that’s what today's urban young India is actually, very different people in one?
• Ekta Kapoor: I think on Tuesdays I go the temple, on Fridays I'll be watching movies, on Friday I will drink out with my friends and probably on Saturdays I will visit the temple again. I can't be slotted. I love adult humour. I love mantras as much as I love hearing the mantra in the morning the way I would love to hear an Adele song. I do not think I, I mean I still get mushy when I hear Coldplay, so I don't think I should be slotted. I am the young urban Indian who likes naughty humour, who likes seeing survivor stories. Women who are aware of their sexuality, who are spiritual and who work hard to achieve what they want, so I am in really, as I said critics can sit and decide and decipher and categorise and put me into boxes, I jump out of them.
• NDTV: You jump out of them, but also, I think what you have restored is the story as king and the content. And I think when you, you know when you look beyond the fact that sex is, okay, a part of it or not, the script is really an essential part of all your movies or your television shows as well. What goes into deciding what subject will interest you? I mean, I read recently that, I think at one point of the controversy that there the Arushi case was used and Neeraj Grover who had worked in Balaji ...
• Ekta Kapoor: Yes, for a long time
• NDTV: … in your company that happened right after, I think you said that LSD, some elements of that, reminded you of real life in Mumbai?
• Ekta Kapoor: When the script of Love Sex Aur Dhokha came to me, I wanted to start ALT. And I didn’t want ALT to be a star-studded affair with big stars, but we were piggybacking on success. We wanted it to be a clutter-breaking storytelling that actually went out and probably, if not changed the type of movies being made, but maybe push the envelope a bit. When Dibakar narrated me the script, I took it home because when Meenal Wagle was doing her book, she came up with a very strong question that, she said you're as much to blame as probably the girl who killed Neeraj. So, and I was like, why? And she said you made a young, 21 year old boy, or 24 year-old boy come from a small town and take over something as big as casting. It's actually a power that you even don't, an unimaginable power to actually cast or choose the first level of casting to bring to you. Which means that somehow it can give them undue advantage, or they can take this power in the wrong way. I was just thinking, yaar you have young people coming to Bombay, sex is no longer for enjoyment, somebody shooting somebody, somebody wants to get famous. Somebody using sex to get famous, somebody is using sex to get back. I mean, if it's happening all over that these small town kids that we were hiring, 50 new kids were coming in every year into Balaji, and I was like this is something I want to make now. And that's how I told Dibakar, no star cast, fine. Budget? Fine. Let's do this one.
• NDTV: We keep talking about this whole casting couch but in a way it's an outdated concept, because the point you made is true …
• Ekta Kapoor: Absolutely outdated
• NDTV: … because again women are not necessarily the victims in all cases.
• Ekta Kapoor: If I ever show you my mobile, you'll be shocked. I mean if you go to my Facebook, you'll be shocked. I mean there are various people from various spheres of life, various thought processes; writing unbelievable messages and you're like, casting couch? For us it's like, a medical job, you know and you've like seen so much of sex that it no longer holds. What do you call, important like casting couch, it's made every hour and after like 5 years, you'll be like, whatever.
• NDTV: Right, okay we'll go talk to more people. From Mumbai, let's hear what they have got to ask you.
• Mumbai Questioner 1: Hi Ekta, this is Sameena Sabdari here. Your serials have often taken a leap of about 20 years and 5 years and so on. Then we don't get to see our loveable character in that serial again. So why is this so? Please could you explain about it so that our viewers would know?
• Mumbai Questioner 2: Hi Ekta this is Amtas here. Your first serial was a comedy, Hum Paanch, and later you have switched on to the family serial drama. What made you switch on to the family drama serials?
• NDTV: Those two look really shattered, shaken by your decisions. You have the aura that television connects us, like members of their family or fast-forwarded members of their family .
• Ekta Kapoor: They just got me man. I mean people were abusing me all over. I think, I'm very proud about doing TV because of this. Because I get all kinds of viewers and old aunts tell me that their evenings are spent well because they watch TV. First question the lady put is why do I take leaps? I told you earlier, we don't have season breaks here. We need to get freshness back into a show. And when a show stagnates, we have to sometimes remove viewers and bring them back at some time, because only you realise the value of something only when it's lost. And, second question the lady put was why did I get into in to family drama, why did I make the switch? Well I think I'm constantly switching, if it’s family drama or it’s comedies or it’s adult comedies or it’s survivor stories and biographies, I think I get bored easily. I'm a Gemini woman.
• NDTV: Some more questions from Bhopal
• Bhopal Question: Hi Ekta, main Yogita, Bhopal se. Main aapke bachpan se lekar ek question poochna chaahti hoon. Maine kahin pada hai ki aap apni papa ke saath ek baar shoot pe gayi aur ek heroine ke peeche chappal leke daud padi. Toh mujhe samaj mein nahi aaya ki aisa aapne kyon kiya. Toh aap mujhe please bathaaiye ki aisa kyon hua?
• NDTV: Is that true?
• Ekta Kapoor: Yes, I was obsessed with my father. I was a child who, when I was a kid, I was so small I didn’t let him talk to anyone. I remember he was on a shoot with Helen and Helen told him that if looks could kill, there's this kid there in the audience who wanted to kill me. This happened near the Nairobi Airport. He had gone to shoot and I told him he could not sign an autograph when I was around. I mean why are they coming and taking pictures with my father? And my Mum was the only woman who was allowed to talk to my father. Even his own mother couldn't talk to him. I was a crack child. Clearly the insanity continued, but yes, I did that.
• NDTV: I don't know how she actually heard about that, so if it wasn't the heroine then who was it? Was it a hapless fan?
• Ekta Kapoor: It was a fan, and I was this kid. I think I was about , running behind her with this shoe and my father and mother were trying to control me. I was like how dare you, and she kissed my Dad on the cheek. There were lots of fans and they were kissing my Dad and I couldn't take it, I was so possessive.
• NDTV: What is the worst rumour you've heard about yourself? Because there so many of them they stretch from various things …
• Ekta Kapoor: … I have now decided not to react to rumours because, as I said, I used to be a human being, now I'm folklore.
• NDTV: So you were talking about your father and I've got your father to ask you a question. Let's have a look at that.
• Jeetendra: Hi Ekta. When you started your TV company of course I was apprehensive because I did not know good or bad you were in your creative work. So I was wondering what you'll do with the TV programmes that you were making at that time? And initially you had lot of not very encouraging results. And you withheld, you stood by all that and eventually what you did, everybody knows. So that's okay, you did very well in TV. Then you started doing movies, there also initially you were not very successful, initially, and gradually you’re getting hold of it and you’re doing very well there. And something, which is very personal, that is you are trying to lose, you are losing weight. But the kind of weight you have lost now, that is also very creditable. You achieved that. So I think all things, which you wanted, you're doing very well for yourself. Only thing I want to ask you is, what next?
• Ekta Kapoor: The ‘what next’ is when am I getting married?
• NDTV: But he apparently first asked that 20 years ago because that time also he told you now either do something or get married.
• Ekta Kapoor: … He's been, wanting me to get married for 20 years.
• NDTV: But no such luck yet?
• Ekta Kapoor: I'm finding the right guy and seeing the way things are going, I'm not seeing them anywhere.
• NDTV: I think men will be scared of you now, are they intimidated by you?
• Ekta Kapoor: A lot
• NDTV: What next? Forget about the marriage bit, but what next?
• Ekta Kapoor: As I said, God is writing my script. He'd know better. NDTV: And God is always there for you he's very much a part of your life, isn't it?
• Ekta Kapoor: I think, yes, I'm spiritual because of the fact I know exactly where God is. He's in my heart and I live my life knowing fully well, that in the next two years, or three years, whatever I plan professionally, I let it happen. But personally, I let God write my scripts.
• NDTV: Ekta Kapoor, thank you so much for joining us tonight.