There is a storm going on social media after veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta’s piece on the dark realities of Bollywood awards came up.
In his write-up, Shekhar, who once served as the CEO and editor-in-chief of The Indian Express Group, openly named and shamed a lot of Bollywood celebrities for throwing tantrums during his stint with the Screen Awards.
Amongst all the instances he recalled, one was about Zoya Akhtar and her film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. As per him, it so happened that Zoya was so miffed on not winning the Best Director’s award that she, along with the film’s whole team, decided to boycott the show and refused to accept even the Best Film honour.
He wrote, “The Year 2012 was my last Screen Awards ordeal. The best film was shared between Vidya Balan-starrer Dirty Picture and multi-starrer Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD). So far, so good. But again, in its wisdom, the jury chose Milan Luthria (Dirty Picture) for best director, and not Zoya Akhtar (ZNMD). On the day of the awards, Priyanka (Screen’s former editor) called in a panic as usual. The cast and crew of ZNMD, she said, were boycotting. Now, how do you run an awards evening if nobody appears on the stage to accept ‘best film’. We again started diplomacy. But it wasn’t working. Not only was nobody from the film turning up, they had also persuaded all their friends.”
“At one point that evening, I got desperate enough to even call Javed Akhtar to plead with him. I did get a call back from Farhan. He turned up, sullen and in a black tee. He said while he might have come there out of respect (not for the jury), he wouldn’t accept the award on the stage. He left in a few minutes,” he added.
Lastly, Shekhar revealed how the film’s producer, too, didn’t turn up to receive the award as she feared getting boycotted by those stars. “In the front rows, I spotted Krishika Lulla, whose company Eros held the worldwide rights to the film, and requested her to come and accept the award for the film. The temperature dropped to minus-30; she froze. How could any producer risk the ire of multiple dynasties, stars and a sizeable clique all rolled together? We had to finally get one of our staff members to take the award on the film’s behalf,” concluded Shekhar.
