Karan Johar once confessed he ‘wanted to murder Anushka Sharma’s career’, told Aditya Chopra not to take her

Karan Johar had once confessed that he had almost ‘ruined’ Anushka Sharma’s career after he asked Aditya Chopra to not sign her for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Karan reportedly wanted Sonam Kapoor in the film and had reluctantly watched Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. He however, was impressed on seeing her in Band Baaja Baaraat and thought of apologising to her. Also read: Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas hug Karan Johar at NMACC event days after her interview about being bullied in Bollywood

Anushka Sharma made her successful debut with the 2008 film, starring opposite Shah Rukh Khan. The film was directed by Aditya Chopra and was a super hit at the box office.

During the 18th MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in 2016, Karan had accompanied the lead actors of his film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai for an on-stage interaction with Rajeev Masand and Anupama Chopra. Talking about Anushka, Karan had said, “I totally wanted to, completely murder Anushka Sharma’s career. Because when Aditya Chopra showed me her image, I was like, ‘no, no, mad or what, you signing her, you crazy! There is no need for you to sign this Anushka Sharma’. There was another lead actress at that time who I wanted Adi to sign and I was totally behind the scene sabotaging her completely. The movie also I was reluctantly watching Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.”

Adding how her performance in another film changed his perception about her, he went on to add, “But when I saw Band Baaja Baaraat, I called her and I felt like I owed her an apology and a compliment. Apology because I felt so embarrassed that I would have actually ruined the graph of an exceptional talent and secondly, a compliment because I thought she was amazing.”

As a video from the 2016 event was shared on Reddit recently, not many were pleased with Karan’s statement. A Reddit user reacted, “Wow. He himself is admitting that he kept trying to sabotage her career.” Another said, “Just completely loving how he is openly accepting how capable he is to murder/ sabotage anyone’s career and able to replace the cast and change their career graphs as he wants!!” One more commented, “It’s gross how he can so comfortably admit to doing this stuff and nobody bats an eye. I feel as though this info getting out about someone in Hollywood would be hugely damaging to their career. But the power dynamic in Bollywood means that he won’t feel any of the backlash from straight up admitting to this. Ew.”

“If he’s openly admitting this about Anushka Sharma imagine how many other talented actors career he’s sabotaged, we’ll never know coz some of them might’ve never gotten the chance to even debut,” read a comment. A person also pointed out, “Watch Anushka’s face change when she relives the memories of ‘behind the scene’ sabotage to her career… KJo and gang think they’re know it all in terms of who’s and what’s gonna work in showbiz…. the audacity!!”