As she shoots for her comeback film Nikamma, Shilpa Shetty Kundra greenlights her second outing, Priyadarshan's comedy Hungama 2
Upala KBR (MID-DAY; November 29, 2019)

She stayed away from the big screen for 13 years, happy to trade the arc lights for motherhood. Now that Shilpa Shetty has ended her hiatus with Nikamma, filmmakers are making a beeline to sign her on. Even as she shoots for her comeback vehicle, the actor has greenlit Hungama 2, which will mark her first collaboration with Priyadarshan. The comedy, which will also feature Paresh Rawal, Meezaan Jaaferi and South actor Pranitha Subhash, is expected to go on floors in January.

A source reveals, "Even though it is being touted as a sequel to Hungama, this film is not a continuation of the 2003 hit and has a different storyline. Shilpa will play a glamorous, career-oriented woman who finds herself at the centre of a hilarious misunderstanding. Her knack for comedy has remained largely untapped in the films she did earlier. So when this role came her way, she jumped at the idea."

Priyadarshan, who recently wrapped up the shoot of Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham, has dived headlong into the pre-production of the comic caper and is currently on a recce in Dehradun. "Hungama 2 will go on floors on January 6," informs the director, adding that it is surprising how it took so many years for Shetty and him to collaborate. "For this role, I wanted an actor who has ruled the film industry as the character is integral [to the narrative]. Shilpa plays a glamorous and the most hilarious character in the movie. She is paired opposite Paresh Rawal. We have titled the film Hungama 2 because it has funny situations arising from confusion and misunderstandings, and thus, has the spirit of Hungama."

DNA (May 17, 2019)

Tomorrow, filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali will introduce the two new talents from his production house. Meezaan (son of Jaaved Jaaferi) and Sharmin Segal (SLB’s niece), who make their debut in his production, Malaal, helmed by Mangesh Hadawale.

Unlike other debutants, Meezaan and Sharmin, who spent over two years prepping for the love story, have been kept away from the media glare. What’s more, they even shut down their social media accounts, lest any aspect of them or their big debut is leaked online.

Inside sources reveal that Bhansali has been personally involved in the grooming of Meezaan and Sharmin, right from the start, in preparing them for their silver screen outing.

“There is also a lot of intrigue and curiosity surrounding Meezaan and Sharmin’s first media interaction as they have been kept under wraps so far. The wait is finally over as the big reveal will take place this week,” says our source, adding, “SLB will unveil the trailer of Malaal and introduce the two debutants this weekend. So, everyone will get to see the effort the two newcomers have put in to earn their spot in the limelight.”

Mahaveer Jain, who arranged for the meetings, has made a short film on Narendra Modi and is a producer on film about Balakot air strike
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 1, 2019)

Mahaveer Jain has been in the news recently for arranging several meetings between B-town biggies and prime minister Narendra Modi to discuss the various challenges faced by the film industry. The first of these interactions took place last year in October in the Capital at which Aamir Khan, Siddharth Roy Kapur, Aanand L Rai and Ritesh Sidhwani among others were present. In January he once again flew down with Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra, Ayushmann Khurrana, Karan Johar, Ekta Kapoor, Vicky Kaushal, Bhumi Pednekar, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, Rajkummar Rao and Rohit Shetty to meet the PM. The filmmaker reveals there are more to come.

“This is the first time that the government and the film industry have come so close and on top of our agenda is building more cinema halls. China has over 50,000 screens and our PM wants the two and three-tier cities to have many more screens, a vision our film industry shares,” informs Mahaveer.

He comes from a business family which primarily deals in textiles. A passion for cinema, along with entertaining and educative Aamir Khan-starrers like Taare Zameen Par and 3 Idiots brought him into show business. “I have been lucky to meet good people along the way,” smiles Mahaveer who turned producer in 2011 with Mangesh Hadawale’s children’s film Dekh Indian Circus. It bagged four National Awards. Last year, he made a short film based on the early life of Modi, Chalo Jeete Hain, also directed by Mangesh. He is now collaborating with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Bhushan Kumar and Abhishek Kapoor to produce a film on the recent Balakot air strikes which will be directed by Abhishek.

“Our film is a tribute to our brave soldiers who risk their lives for the country, it’s a story very close to our hearts. Abhishek and his team are presently working on the script after which we would begin casting. Presenting it right is a huge responsibility,” he admits.

He is producing another film with SLB which will launch the latter’s niece Sharmin, and Jaaved Jaaferi’s son Meezaan and is once again being directed by Mangesh. “Sanjay ji is a little reserved but I’ve got to know him closely over the years and realised that he has a heart of gold. I’m hoping to collaborate with him again,” says Mahaveer who is also backing a slice-of-life entertainer. “We have finished 70-80 per cent of its shoot. Sonakshi’s (Sinha) character is trying to realise her dreams with Varun Sharma as her brother. He will remind you of Choocha from Fukrey. We are also exploring the idea of getting Sonakshi and Badshah to sing a song,” Mahaveer signs off. 

Moving out of the periphery of pop culture consciousness, Jaaved Jaaferi hits the reset button again as the star of Monsoon Wedding’s recent musical
Shaikh Ayaz (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 13, 2017)

"The point is, I was the last one on.” Jaaved Jaaferi’s booming voice, instantly recognisable thanks to his various avatars over the years as a film actor, funnyman, dancer and TV host, ricochets in his 17th floor apartment in Lokhandwala complex. “They had three workshops over the past year and a half. Everybody knew what they had to do. I didn’t. So, when I landed in New York I was totally raw, and, kind of, nervous. This is the first time I was doing a full-fledged musical. Eight shows a week.” He feigns exhaustion.

Jaaferi has recently returned from the US, having acted in the musical version of Mira Nair’s 2001 cult film Monsoon Wedding. The musical premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California and will travel to Broadway next year. Last seen on Hindi screens as a flamboyant baddie opposite Hrithik Roshan in Bang Bang! three years ago, Jaaferi plays Lalit in the musical, the role of the bride’s father, made memorable by Naseeruddin Shah in the original.

To conjure Lalit, Jaaferi didn’t revisit Monsoon Wedding. He wanted to avoid “the whole Naseer bhai influence.” Instead, he says he channelled his inner Tevye, the Yiddish daddy from his favourite Hollywood musical, Fiddler On The Roof. As an actor, he usually starts with a point of reference — “to refer your character to something in real life.” For instance, in the 2007 comedy Dhamaal — his most prominent mainstream success yet, alongside 2005’s Salaam Namaste — he dropped his baritone completely to assume the voice of a 10-yearold.

His character Manav was a dungaree-clad, beret-sporting man-child with a penchant for getting his friends and himself into trouble. “When you play a character you try to make a new person, which obviously incorporates the way he walks, thinks, and the voice. For Manav, I took on the demeanour of Laurel & Hardy and the slouch. I gave him a lisp because we had to make him a weak character,” he says, forgetting to mention that so much of his performance in that film is more an ode to Mr Bean. Similarly, the cowboy of Salaam Namaste had shades of Crocodile Dundee and Feroz Khan.

Explaining his approach, especially with impersonation (he balks at the term “mimicry”) he says, “You have to caricature it a bit. If RK Laxman draws Mr Bachchan, he will probably extend his nose or make his eyes droop. A cartoonist takes a prominent feature of a personality and pushes it a little to make it funny.” A man of many talents, Jaaferi calls himself a keen observer of life and people. “It’s all about your power of observation. It’s like having a database. You can take from whoever you want, but make it your own. When A R Rahman takes a riff from Michael Jackson, he makes a new song.” Jaaferi has a madcap mimetic gift. He is devastatingly funny. But that’s reserved only for the camera.

In person, Jaaferi is very, very serious — even mournful. “It’s assumed that a comedian has to be funny all the time. From Chaplin to Johnny Walker saab to Mehmood saab, they were all serious people.” Spend some time with the Janus-faced star and a portrait emerges of a man who has the supple flexibility to draw from his bag of tricks and become anyone he wants. His Twitter bio reads: “Biodegradable Entertainer. Actor, producer, director, stand up comedian, choreographer, voice artist, occasional pessimist, frequent optimist. Aam Aadmi.”

The son of Jagdeep, a much-loved Bollywood comedian, humour has always been his sweet spot. But how on earth did he inherit a talent for dance? Jaaferi was the face of Boogie Woogie, the dance TV show that ran for so long, one female participant who was then 15 and is now a 33-year-old soccer mom “calls me uncle.” In fact, Jaaferi got his Bollywood break in 1985 when he landed the role of a rock-n-roll villain in Subhash Ghai’s Meri Jung. A friend dropped his “video tape” off at Ghai’s office and the next thing he knew, he was cast as the “dancing villain, a first in Hindi cinema.”

Today, looking back, Jaaferi says with a touch of regret, “It was a mistake.” His life would have turned out differently if he had been launched as a hero instead. “It was a wrong decision because at that point, villains were well-defined. Villains were bad people. Dancing was done by good people. If ever a villain danced, he was bad at it, but I could kill with dance, I was so good.” “It’s like Govinda. Govinda came in a year and half after I did. And he was also a dance guy. If I had come as a hero, I would have been somewhere in that zone.”

Post Meri Jung, he quickly got typecast. Bollywood soon put him on a musical chair and before long, he was relegated to middling multi-hero films. Over the years, Jaaferi has tried to repackage himself but all efforts to hit the reset button on a promising career have been met with mixed results. And yet, he has stuck around. Whether it was his VJ-ing days during which he did side-splitting skits on Bollywood, the zany voiceover for the dubbed version of the Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle (he reimagined General Lee as Dilip Kumar), or the “It’s different” refrain from the Maggi ad, our pop culture is somewhat incomplete without Jaaved Jaaferi’s minor presence. Now, having been around for 30 odd years — “there were some even, also,” he deadpans — what excites him most is the chance to be a “principal” actor in a film.

“I would have loved to play Boman’s (Irani) role in 3 Idiots,” instead of the real Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad (his appearance in the Raju Hirani blockbuster, was brief but important, plot-wise). By his own admission, Jaaferi is a victim of “image.” Assume, he entreats, “The director would never have cast me for Boman’s role, because I am not old enough to be Kareena’s (Kapoor) father and not too young, either.” He believes he belongs in the same space as Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui but nobody will cast him in their roles. Again, that damn “image”.

At 53, Jaaferi looks young enough to match his graduation photograph. And yet, he’s a father of three teenagers. One of them, Meezaan, is following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps. Tipped to be launched by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Jaaferi observes nostalgically, “He’s coming in approximately at the same age I did — 22. The way he’s coming in is also the same. Out of the blue, you get an offer and you’re in.”

The same could be said about Jaaferi’s blink-and-you- miss-it political career. A political rookie, he contested for 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Lucknow on an Aam Aadmi Party ticket, but lost to BJP heavyweight Rajnath Singh. Joining politics was a kneejerk reaction. Even his family was surprised. “I didn’t want to be a politician. I just wanted to say I believe in this, ‘put your money where your mouth is’ kind of a thing.” He still believes in AAP’s promise of “political change”, but washes his hands of active politics. “Bachchan saab burnt his fingers in politics. I should have, perhaps, learnt my lessons.”