Akshay Kumar On Bollywood VS South, Being The Only Hindi Actor In The List Of ‘Pan-India’ Stars India Loves: “Here Actors Are Scared…”
Akshay Kumar recently graced Karan Johar's talk show with Samantha where they discussed several topics, including Akki ruling the most-popular pan-India stars chart
Akshay Kumar Reacts To The Debate Of Bollywood VS South & Being The Only Hindi Actor In The List Of ‘Pan-India’ Stars India Loves(Pic Credit: Instagram, Facebook)
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Akshay Kumar & Samantha Prabhu graced Koffee With Karan Season 7’s episodes 3. After an okayish last episode ft. Janhvi Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, there were some great hopes from this one. And a week later, we all sat on the couch with a cup of coffee, to witness an okay episode once again.
The first half of the episode went majorly into discussing both the stars’ marriages respectively and Karan Johar’s close-to-the-heart subject Nepotism. He also labelled Akshay as a ‘brand ambassador’ of outsiders in Bollywood.
While conversing, KJo shared a list by Ormax that had the most popular pan-India stars (for April 2022) and it had only one Hindi star on the list i.e. Akshay Kumar. KJo said, “We have an Ormax survey and Akshay Kumar is ruling the chart, recently they did a pan-India survey that said No. 1 female actress pan-India is Samantha Prabhu. This is an ego-feed!”
Samantha asked, “The entrance wasn’t? (Hinting at the beautiful entry she made in Akshay’s arms) I should be honest, I’m paying someone at Ormax. Yes, I’ve to accept.” KJo replied, “I’m glad you’re out with it because I’m wondering. You beat Alia Bhatt, dude. How does that feel?”
Samantha Prabhu replied, “Sorry, it was a high price to pay.” Karan Johar putting the limelight back on Akshay Kumar said “Akshay, month after month, year after year, you’ve been number 1 across Ormax’s lists. When they did a pan-India survey, this is the rating that happened. I want to ask you, it’s rather interesting. You’re the only Hindi film actor on that male list. (A) How does that make you feel? (B) What should we feel as a Hindi film industry?”
Akshay said, “We need to work hard. We all need to work hard. That’s it. I actually don’t know what to say. Whether I should be happy about it or not.”
Karan Johar further asked, “Do you think they’re doing something right to get pan-India love? That’s something we need to up our game for? Is there analysis in your head about the situation?”
Akshay thinking for a while about the problem, said “I’ll be very honest about this. Here, in Hindi cinema, actors are very scared of doing 2-3 hero films. I don’t know why? I don’t think that happens in the South.”
Karan further elaborates on the problem and shared his side of the story revealing “As a producer, I’m telling you it’s impossible to cast a 2-hero film, two any actors, male leads, female leads. It could be the insecurity of ‘I can’t own this film completely’ or ‘There will be a one-upmanship that will affect my stardom.’ You can ask any Bollywood producer or producer across the border.”
Before ending the topic, Akshay Kumar revealed some interesting facts about his latest film with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions’ Selfiee which also stars Emraan Hashmi. Akshay exclaimed, “You and I produced a film just now and you know how many problems we had!” To which Karan Johar agreed “We had a lot of issues casting for it.”
Akshay Kumar revealer, “We asked 2-3 actors to do it and they refused to say ‘No, it’s a 2-hero subject.’ I even told them, “You choose the role, you take it, whatever you want. Whatever you want, you take this one, I’ll take this one.” And very smartly, Akshay Kumar pointed at the screen displaying the stars ruling the pan-India list & said “So then, this is going to happen.”
