It happened one night, on the couch of Koffee with Karan, when the pop culture discourse for years to come about Bollywood was hijacked by one word: Nepotism. Actor Emraan Hashmi says the idea that connections within the industry are solely responsible for an outsider to not get work is “far from true” and bereft of any nuance.
On Karan Johar’s chat show, in 2017, actor Kangana Ranaut had called the filmmaker “flag bearer of nepotism”. The impact of the word was so widespread that it logged itself in the Bollywood lexicon, with many outsiders voicing their concerns over the industry favouring cliques and star kids.
What, however, started as a sincere exercise to look inwards slowly turned into an excuse to slam star kids, questioning their presence in a film and quickly snowballed into a cycle of toxic criticism. Emraan Hashmi, who himself comes from a film family, told Indian Express News that people latched onto the word “nepotism” without fully understanding its nuance.
“I believe there’s a certain communion also in hate mongering. There’s a sense of belonging in everyone jumping on a mob-like bandwagon to bring down something. There’s a kind of intoxication in that. There’s a classic case of that in the nepotism debate. When it was first spoken on Koffee with Karan, most people didn’t even know what the word meant.
“People looked it up and it soon became a thing that trended. People jumped on it, gave their own opinions when it probably wasn’t even their own opinion. They cumulatively saw what was out there in the environment and started jumping on it,” he said.
Emraan Hashmi, who started his journey as an assistant director on Raaz, made his Bollywood debut with Footpath, which was produced by his uncles Mahesh Bhatt and Mukesh Bhatt. The actor said he had his share of good fortune in being part of the film industry because he was a part of a film family. “I have also maintained that I can’t be apologetic about this because this was the hand that was dealt to me.”
Emraan said because he had been an assistant director, he has seen closely how difficult it is for outsiders to “even get an entry” in a film office.
The actor said, “Forget about an audition, they don’t even get a meeting with the assistant director. It’s tough, but not impossible. It’s good to throw light on it, protest about it, but beyond a point that protest becomes a crutch, an excuse.”
“You feel you didn’t get something because the other person is getting it because of their film connections. That’s far from true. There are people who have pushed through and have gotten in… Nepotism is never going to go. You will have people who would want to push people from their own tribe. They will look out for each other, that’s embedded in our DNA. But it’s an industry where we can co-exist,” he added.
Emraan Hashmi will be next seen in Disney Plus Hotstar series Showtime, which aims to shed light on the workings of the film industry in a fun, slightly over-the-top manner. Showtime is created and written by Sumit Roy with Mihir Desai attached as a showrunner.
