Kaafi With Karan? As Karan Johar’s show airs final season, what it got right and wrong

It’s the end of an era. There is no more conjecture on the subject. The coffee will be poured one last time. The couch that launched many controversies and manifested at least two celebrity weddings will be set up again. After 22 years and 161 episodes, Koffee with Karan, which made gossip the mainstay of an Indian talk show and had an undeniable impact on pop culture, is coming to a close. The show’s ninth and final season starts streaming on Jio Hotstar from 14 October, and rumours circulating online suggest that there may be some new faces on Karan’s couch and some old favourites returning one last time.

Koffee with Karan’s first episode aired on Star World on 19 November 2004. After six seasons on television, it shifted to a streaming platform, Disney+ Hotstar, where the seventh and eighth seasons dropped. When the show first began our only access to movie stars was through film magazines, entertainment sections of newspapers and the occasional television news channel interview. Before KWK, the only other successful talk show hosted by a film personality was Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, where she met celebrities from different walks of life in a serene spa-like environment. She was part host, part therapist and her guests shared many deep, untold secrets with her. Who can forget the episodes with J Jayalalithaa and Ratan Tata?

Koffee with Karan replaced Simi Garewal’s monochromatic sophisticated charm with colours, cattiness, and lots of politically incorrect conversations. Karan more than encouraged his guests to reveal the claws behind their manicured nails or the insecurities lurking beneath the fancy suits and sculpted bodies. Who can forget Kareena and Priyanka’s deliciously nasty comments on accents and where they come from, Deepika Padukone asking Ranbir Kapoor to endorse a condom brand, Kangana adding nepotism to our collective vocabulary, Rakhi’s candid confessions on plastic surgery, Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul endangering their careers with tales of how they like to score off the field or Salman Khan claiming to be a virgin.

Mean comments, throwing shade or making little effort to appear sensitive or conceal one’s disdain for another member of the fraternity was what led to the show’s immediate popularity in the early seasons. We had never really seen movie celebrities display the same insecurities and weaknesses as us regular folk, and watching the venom emerge from behind the veneer was both entertaining and strangely cathartic.

But all that changed as social media started driving public discourse, and constant trolling forced celebrities to be on guard and depend on PR approved responses and narratives. In 2020, when Sushant Singh Rajput died by suicide, there was a tsunami of hatred and suspicion that rose against the film fraternity. Bollywood was portrayed as a hotbed of debauchery and evil, with stars being investigated for drug use, old video clips being selectively used to create conspiracy theories, and accusations of camps and cliques manipulating the careers of those who didn’t come from film families gaining strength.

Karan Johar found himself at the eye of the storm, given his then history of working either with existing superstars or launching children of erstwhile movie stars. The trolling was vicious, and many felt that the public outrage against Karan meant that his career as a filmmaker and the show Koffee with Karan were both under threat.

But in 2022, Koffee with Karan returned with its seventh season and in 2023, the eighth season of the show dropped. There were only 13 episodes in each season, and a distracting number of brand integrations that impacted the flow of conversation and the seeming exclusivity of the show. The guests were all there because they had a film releasing, had worked with Karan recently, wanted to work with him again, or were young and popular online to guarantee views. Though the conversations were still laced with plenty of sexual innuendo and almost zero seriousness, the days of Kareena calling John Abraham expressionless or Emraan Hashmi labelling Aishwarya Rai plastic were definitely over. Everyone spoke like they had been coached, and the fear of being trolled or cancelled over a comment definitely loomed large in the most recent seasons.

throwback to kareena and shahid’s kwk episode
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Koffee with Karan’s USP was that it allowed us to be a fly on the wall while celebrities we knew little about had an informal conversation with Karan. Thanks to his personal equation with them, he managed to keep things largely light, funny and unserious. The show’s unapologetic frivolity was also refreshing, allowing us to view celebrities in a completely new light. The format of having rounds, a gift hamper and time limits for answers gave the show an informal house party-like vibe, which also added to its popularity.

While the show’s irreverent tone worked, what probably didn’t was its refusal to evolve over two decades. While there were some moments of real vulnerability or emotional depth, like when Deepika Padukone and Karan discussed their mental health challenges, or Arjun Kapoor spoke about safeguarding Malaika Arora’s son, Koffee with Karan has essentially stayed the same show while the world around it changed. Also, not all its past episodes have aged well. When you rewatch conversations from the first five or six seasons, it’s shocking to see the many instances of body shaming, objectification, and homophobic comments and questions.

Perhaps this was a reflection of a different time when being sensitive, inclusive or politically correct was not considered necessary in the public domain. But in retrospect, it seems shocking that no one found these comments objectionable. The show also refused to address any serious issues beyond a passing comment or conversation. Whether it was pay parity in Bollywood, the #MeToo movement, which was only addressed briefly in a conversation with Aamir Khan, or the defensive tone around nepotism and the existence of camps and cliques in Bollywood. A chat show can be entertaining without being afraid of pausing the jokes to take a stand.

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Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh on Koffee with Karan.

Love it, loathe it or tolerate it, one cannot deny the tremendous impact Koffee with Karan has had on popular culture. It simultaneously set the benchmark and created a precedent for the celebrity talk shows that followed. For many of us who started watching the show when it first launched 22 years ago, it seems gratifying to see that many of its original guests, especially female actors, are still relevant and in the business. Nepo babies are here to stay, talented outsiders have made their mark, the thirst for gossip is just as strong but sadly laced with a proclivity for outrage, and no matter how old we get, our fascination for movie stars endures. So, let’s raise our cups to one last season of Koffee with Karan, and hope that he gives us episodes that are candid, catty, and laced with just the right amount of controversy.