India’s Most Controversial Celebrity Talk Show Is Back. Here’s Why It Endures.

Over 17 years and across six seasons, the talk show Koffee With Karan, hosted by Bollywood producer and director Karan Johar, has had a singular focus: to get Indian celebrities to open up about their personal lives. Outcomes of that agenda have included a 48-year-old actor with a  history of toxic relationships “confessing” to still being a virgin, another actor being endlessly trolled for not knowing the name of India’s president, and another “thrashing” a fellow actor for “offering” to pinch her ass, if she so wanted. 

The infamous “Koffee couch,” where celebrities, often Bollywood actors, sit to spill the… uhmmm… coffee, can become a tinderbox of emotions, fragile egos, and flying tempers. As host, Johar relies on his standing as one of India’s most influential producer-directors to get Bollywood A-listers, usually with a film to promote, to appear on his show. The show consistently ranks on lists of the most viewed Indian talk shows, with the last season garnering more than six million viewers in just a week. 

“I love it because it’s ridiculous and senseless fun,” film critic Sucharita Tyagi told VICE. “It is literally what we should expect celebrities to do – entertain us. The occasional episode with directors is a tad more insightful, but mostly it’s just silly gossip and why the hell not? I’m all for it.” 

An influencer, who preferred to stay anonymous so as to not get needlessly embroiled in controversies, said she watches the show religiously because it manages to somehow make the celebrities seem “more human and relatable.” However, she added, it cannot be ignored as harmless, meaningless fun. 

“Koffee With Karan has reduced the quality of discourse in India because it has almost institutionalised gossip in our country, evidenced in how the recent Alia Bhatt-Ranbir Kapoor wedding was trolled for being a shotgun wedding,” she said. “We believe that people’s lives are an open book for us to comment upon. There’s a thin line between gossip and active harm, and the general tone of Koffee With Karan has narrowed those lines.”

While the show has had its share of controversies across six seasons, in 2020, there was talk of the seventh season of Koffee With Karan being cancelled as a likely fallout of the suicide of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The actor’s death brought into sharp focus the theory that the show is no more than a platform for Johar’s friends, and “outsiders” like Rajput are unwelcome. 

Certain news channels even went so far as to suggest that Johar was in some way responsible for Rajput’s death after the circulation of clips from the show in which actor Alia Bhatt chose to “kill” Rajput in the game Kill/ Marry/ Hook-Up, and another in which actor Sonam Kapoor said she was unaware of who the actor was. Kapoor has since clarified that the clip was taken from an episode she did seven years ago, and also that it had been edited, which meant that context was likely missing.

After the Rajput controversy, the show went on a two-year hiatus, with most people assuming that it had been nixed by the producers who couldn’t risk further angering Rajput’s bereaved fans. After all, Alia Bhatt’s sister, Shaheen Bhatt, had also received rape and death threats shortly after Alia’s Kill/ Marry/ Hookup clip from the show went around. 

Yesterday, the show returned for its seventh season, with the first episode being streamed on Disney+ Hotstar, featuring Alia Bhatt and Ranveer Singh. So, what explains this obsessive, almost toxic relationship that we seem to collectively have with Koffee With Karan? Neuropsychologist Jasdeep Mago told VICE that a lot can be explained by understanding how parasocial relationships work — where audiences end up developing a personal bond with celebrities despite having limited or no interaction with them. 

“We develop an attachment style with celebrities that is not reciprocated physically or emotionally, through such talk shows,” she said. “Koffee With Karan is a gimmicky insight into their lives – we supposedly know the smallest things they like or dislike.”

She added that the show creates the illusion of intimacy when Johar and his guests share ordinary details from their lives – this makes us feel like we actually know them.

“So, it’s a relationship we don’t fully grasp and it triggers a lot of emotions inside us. We crave such shows because we want to know more and more every day. The show helps us develop that baseline relationship and we want it to grow.”

This is where the hate and the toxicity set in – the idea that we will still watch it, even when it's obvious that the guests are hamming up their moment. 

“You know they are lying through their teeth,” said Varun Rana, a fashion writer and culture commentator. “Koffee With Karan is a mouthpiece for Bollywood and, as with all mouthpieces, it’s highly managed. I watch the show with a bag of salt. If they really wanted to talk about something truly honest, it would never come up on television. You can enjoy the spectacle of it, but you need to know it’s not real or nourishing in any way.”

Because the relationship we develop with celebrities, particularly through the lens of such shows, is one-sided, it becomes increasingly hard to believe anything. The illusion breaks and we're left with a not-so-pretty picture. 

“When actor Salman Khan came with his brothers, he was more open about his life,” said Mago. “But when he came alone, he claimed to be a virgin. This disparity leads to hate. We nitpick the bits that absolutely don’t make sense and it hurts us.”

Mago added the popularity of the initial three seasons of Koffee With Karan could be ascribed to the fact that several episodes had celebrities being mean behind each other’s backs. 

“So, the first three seasons were very invasive because Johar would prod his guests and scratch old wounds,” she said. “Now it’s just dissecting airport looks and funny accents. There seems to be a common consensus among audiences that Johar simply brings his friends on and they pat each other’s backs. Even the recent Alia-Ranveer episode is all about her happy marriage to Ranbir Kapoor, and how he proposed to her. Everything is sweet and lovely.”

The average Koffee With Karan fan, Mago said, does not want celebrities to get along so well – that is not what they tune in for. But audiences will loyally tune in, regardless of how much they hate themselves for it because it provides a glimpse into the lives of celebrities that not many shows in India do. 

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