Comedy star Johnny Lever spilled the beans about the state of Bollywood that humour in films have lost the charm it to have earlier. He mentioned in a fresh interview that actors are insecure of his comic scenes and often resorted to skipping them making his presence much negligible.
While speaking to ETimes, Johnny cited the example of Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Baazigar. He averred that the film ‘didn’t have a writer’, due to which he had to come up with his own rendition of comedy scenes as a ‘youthful exuberance’.
When asked about why his appearance in films has reduced, to which he responded in Hindi, “I turn down work because the writing is bad these days. You speak of Baazigar… That film had no writer, it was just me. I came up with all the punches. Those were good days, we used to work hard. But these days, we don’t have (comedy) writers. It’s like, ‘Johnny bhai will handle it’. That’s not how it works. We need a blueprint first.”
He continued, “Comedy was given respect back in the day. These days, there’s hardly any comedy in movies. Back in the day, I used to get such a positive response, my scenes would become the highlight of the movie. Sometimes, the heroes would feel threatened and my scenes would be edited. They used to watch how the audience would react to my scenes, and feel insecure. They started asking writers to come up with comedy scenes for them, as well. The writers would start distributing comedy scenes. And my roles became smaller and smaller, which is what you’re seeing now. Comedy is gone.”
