By Shailesh Kapoor
Till about two-and-a-half years ago, not many knew his name. Kapil Sharma had been on TV since 2007, when he featured on the third season of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge. But his real brush with fame and success came when he got a show with his name in it: Comedy Nights With Kapil (CNWK).
Face recognition to name recognition is a critical leap every actor in showbiz aspires for. It’s a good barometer of “having arrivedâ€. Lot of TV stars, and even film stars, don’t have name recognition after years of being around. TV stars are generally known by the name of the most famous character they played in their career. Till today, many know Boman Irani as “Maamuâ€. And we routinely meet consumers who refer to Dalip Tahil as Madan Chopra as a matter of fact.
I had been following Sharma’s work on Comedy Circus for a couple of years before CNWK happened. He was the stand-out comedian on that show, head and shoulders above the rest, in his spontaneity as well as a unique touch of innocence he brought to his performances. His freshness stood out. There was an unmistakable sense of “common man†to him.
When Colors gave him a show with his name in it, and even got him to produce it, they were placing their bets on a man who had the ability to deliver the goods. And he delivered them indeed. Enough has been written about the phenomenal success story of CNWK, including on this column. It seemed like a match made in heaven. A top channel and a top talent, with a show in his name. What could go wrong?
But things indeed went wrong. Today, Sharma is off-air, putting together a show that is rumoured to be going on-air on Sony in the near future. CNWK itself didn’t have the best year in 2015, as ratings flattened out. Colors has a replacement show on-air, but without a titular hero this time.
A small-town struggling actor-comedian comes to Mumbai, achieves success, has a huge tryst with fame, builds a fan base most top Bollywood stars will be enviable of, and then begins to lose his bearings. That’s a classic story, right? Wait, we have even seen the female version of that. The movie was called Fashion.
Talent management is a tricky business, and all channels and production houses encounter celebrities who can give them a pain in their backsides at some point or the other. Petty squabbles over vanity vans, flight tickets for hair and make-up crew, hotel room class, costume selection, etc. are commonplace.
But illusions stardom brings with it can go beyond such squabbles. By all accounts, official and off-the-record (I have never met Sharma), it’s apparent that Sharma had a tough time managing success, and didn’t have the best people around him to advise him either. Over time, that innocence of Comedy Circus, and the first two years of CNWK, was giving way to a certain swagger of success. He even started building his stardom it into his lines (a terrible thing to do), almost sub-consciously perhaps.
But the camera can expose you. The weakening of innocence reflected on screen. May be he was not working on the show as hard as before, maybe he didn’t want success as badly as before, having achieved it already. Whatever the reason, the Kapil Sharma of 2015 was a less endearing version of the Kapil Sharma till 2014. Bollywood aspirations also took their toll (they often do for big TV stars) in the same period.
The channel which airs his show has its task cut out. Sharma is a comedian of immense talent, the best mainstream Indian media has seen ever. But it’s not his talent they have to harness. They have to make the man find himself again. If they manage to do that, it would be like the last act of Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion. When one rediscovers innocence and the hunger to excel. All over again.