I am not ready for one last cup of “koffee” before the couch goes cold. Koffee with Karan has been our go-to for all Bollywood gossip.
Gossip is like a finely brewed cup of tea. But done incorrectly, it is a stale stew of promise and wonder. Karan Johar is the master of good gossip. He prompts, pries and spills what publicists spend months, if not years, guarding.
Love him, loathe him or meme him. You still can’t stop talking about KJO or his art of making stars open up and candidly spill their most protected secrets.
Koffee with Karan began in 2004 with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol on the couch. And it has been going on for 22 years. Johar has now announced that the ninth season of his talk show, premiering on JioHotstar on 14 October, will be its last. This will mark the end of a run of eight seasons and 161 episodes. This will mark the end of a run of eight seasons and 161 episodes, second longest after Phool Khilen Hai Gulshan Gulshan (1972-1993) by Tabbassum.
Plenty of people have interviewed film stars. After Tabbassum came Rendezvous with Simi Garewal (2001-2005), followed by Tere Mere Beech Mein (2009) by Farah Khan and then Raveena Tandon’s Issi Ka Naam Zindagi (2012).
And, more recently, the horror that was Too Much With Twinkle and Kajol. But no one does it like KJO.
There is no comparison to Tabassum or Garewal; they belonged to a different era. But KJO’s contemporaries are missing the “X” factor. Too Much and any such attempts fail the tightrope that is saucy gossip amid the “la la land” talks.
Karan Johar is no Graham Norton, but he is the best we have.
Some koffees can’t be forgotten
Over the years, Koffee with Karan has turned celebrity relationships, romances and rivalries into headlines, memes and debates.
Alia Bhatt walked onto the couch as a newcomer. The Bollywood princess made her Koffee debut to promote her first film, but left with an indelible mark on intelligence. In the quiz round, she was asked who the President of India was, and she answered with total confidence: Prithviraj Chauhan. The audience gasped, and a general knowledge slip became a national in-joke. The clip turned into a long-running internet joke and kept resurfacing for years. It even provided fodder to other shows like the AIB roast. Instead of abandoning the gaffe, KJO owned it and assessed Alia’s GK every time the actor made an appearance on the show.
Then there is the episode that gave Bollywood its favourite fight. In early 2017, Kangana Ranaut appeared with Saif Ali Khan to promote Rangoon and called Johar a champion of nepotism in Bollywood. For Ranaut, Johar might as well be the Godfather of the movie mafia. She added that if a biopic were ever made about her, Johar would play the “flag-bearer of nepotism.”
Over the eight seasons, Koffee with Karan has given us iconic moments like Rakhi Sawant saying, “Jo bhagwan nahi deta, voh doctor de deta hai (What god doesn’t give, a doctor gives)” when asked about cosmetic surgeries, to Sonam Kapoor’s candid and unfiltered comments that always manage to stir up gossip mills and sentiments. And who can forget when SRK took the chance and told Amitabh Bachchan, “Rishte mai toh hum tumhare baap lagte hai (In relation, I am like your father).”
But an Indian talk show without any controversy is a unicorn; thankfully, Koffee with Karan isn’t. And KJO too doesn’t shy away from “conjecture”, it is his favourite word after all. Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul’s comments about women and their personal lives were widely condemned as sexist in Season 6, episode 12. Both players were suspended from all BCCI activity and forced to leave India’s Australia tour midway. They were also fined Rs 20 lakh. Or in the first episode of season 8, when Deepika Padukone-Ranveer Singh’s relationship dynamics attracted too much judgement from social media. The gossip mill was working overtime, and “koffee” was the word of the week.
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Brewing the perfect cup
KJO’s couch is like a truth serum. Here, the guests are the ones who pay for the slip, with ratings and a conversation bordering on the inappropriate. People might throw shade at him, but they all come back each season for some piping hot tea.
Over the years, many have tried their luck at the talk-show format. But the alchemy was never quite right. The X factor can’t be cultivated; it must be ever present like oxygen or a certain smug smirk that says “I know all your secrets.”
The rapid-fire is an art. The format looks easy: a few quick questions, a few easy laughs. It isn’t. Karan once called Season 8’s rapid fire “the most boring rapid fire in the history of the show” and promised a “new syntax” for the next one. A host who publicly roasts his own segment understands that the audience can smell a stale brew from a mile away.
Unlike some (Twinkle and Kajol), Johar lets his guest talk. He likes the sound of his own voice, but not as much as the gossip coming out from the others. In Too Much, that was just the problem; there was too much of Twinkle and Kajol and not enough of the guests.
Most importantly, perhaps, KJO knows how to take a joke. Even when he was dubbed the “flag bearer of nepotism”, Johar remembered his role as host and let it slide with a laugh.
On 14 October, the beginning of the end starts. And mug raised, Johar will do what he has done ever-so-gracefully for 22 years: ask a very innocent question and wait for the guests to fall into the trap, creating yet another iconic pop culture moment.
Koffee with Karan may end, but no one is forgetting the taste of that perfect brew.
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(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)