Gehraiyaan’s Shakun Batra says he was told The Kapil Sharma Show is ‘lowbrow’ but it ‘healed’ him instead

Filmmaker Shakun Batra recently visited The Kapil Sharma Show with the cast of his film Gehraiyaan. The team, which included Deepika Padukone, Ananya Panday, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Dhairya Karwa, played a game with show host Kapil Sharma and watched his troupe perform different skits.

Now, Shakun has talked about his experience on the show. In a new episode of Ranveer Allahbadia’s podcast, Shakun said that Kapil ‘healed’ him with his humour. “Honestly, I hadn’t really followed the whole show. I’d heard it was funny, and people were like, ‘It’s lowbrow’ and whatever. But I didn’t care. I had been shooting for the last year-and-a-half, and I had all this weight. I had just delivered the film four days ago and the next day, I was still waking up with the weight of the film. I went there with no expectation and there, I started to just laugh and laugh more. By the end, I realised I had forgotten about my film,” he said.

Shakun added that on the show, Kapil was ‘doing his thing’ and not really talking about the film. “When I left I thought, dude, I would pay to be in the audience to just watch this. When I went home, I slept and I woke up at 10 in the morning, which had not happened for two years. I had been waking up at 6.30-7 with the whole anxiety of making a film,” Shakun said.

“I think in some way, he healed me that night with his humour. I genuinely don’t know how funny it would be when it comes out but I just tuned in.” Shakun said that he talked to Deepika and Ananya about how there might have been something in the air at the sets that made them laugh so much. 

Also read: Gehraiyaan movie review: Deepika Padukone outdoes herself in Shakun Batra’s film but it isn’t enough

On the show, Kapil made the guest play a game of Chinese whispers where Shakun clearly seemed to be having a lot of fun. He got annoyed at Dhairya for not miming the words properly and even got frustrated at Deepika’s unhelpful description of angoor (grapes).

Gehraiyaan released on Amazon Prime Video last Friday. The film has opened to mixed reviews from critics and audience. This is Shakun’s third film after Ekk Main Aur Ekk Tu and Kapoor and Sons.