Is Emraan Hashmi’s character in Showtime based on Karan Johar? The actor answers | Exclusive

Karan Johar is backing Disney+ Hotstar’s latest web series, Showtime, starring Emraan Hashmi

Karan Johar is backing Disney+ Hotstar's latest web series, Showtime, starring Emraan Hashmi, Mahima Makwana with Mouni Roy, Rajeev Khandelwal, Shriya Saran and many others. The series explores the inner workings of the film industry, giving the audience and insiders view of the underbelly of Bollywood. A video released by Karan Johar to promote the show added fuel to the speculation that it is probably based on his life.

Mid-day.com exclusively spoke to the cast members and the showrunner Mihir Desai recently about the themes the series explores. Excerpts from a chat:

How challenging has it been to make a series like Showtime at a time when anything you say sparks controversy?

Mihir: The show is more than what we are making it out to be, in terms of just nepotism or exposing secrets. If you watch the show you will realise why we have used a dramatic hook like this. There was no stress whole making it.

How close to reality have you kept it?

Mihir: We have tried our best to keep it authentic, because we have been working in this industry for so long. We wanted to shoe the inner workings in a correct manner, at the same time keep it very accessible to the audience.

Emraan, since this series is backed by Karan Johar, many might think your role of a producer might be inspired by him. How true is that?

Emraan: Not true at all. If you ask the writers or the director they will probably not give you an answer where they'll say that it's based on any producer. Through their experiences in the industry, it's a sum total of a lot of people they have encountered, interactions that they have had, anecdotal stuff that they have probably heard. Maybe as an audience member you might pick up a similarity with a real person.

This is an in-depth look at the industry. You never really know what kind of conversations go on in a producer's office. That will never be in the public domain. That is what we are exploring in this show.

Mahima, your character is pitted against that of Emraan's. What were those scenes like?

Mahima: My character makes a 180-degree shift and is thrown into an unknown world. She does become unpredictable. Some of the scenes were challenging, because her honesty and stubbornness often gets her into trouble. I enjoyed every bit of playing her.

There's a preconceived notion about stars that they'll be arrogant and uptight. But the fact that he knew his lines, he was so prepared, that intimidated me more than anything else.