Emraan Hashmi opens up about nepotism debate in Bollywood - ‘It should not become an excuse...’

Actor Emraan Hashmi, who will be seen next in Karan Johar’s upcoming series Showtime, has expressed his views on the ongoing nepotism debate in the Bollywood industry and how it affects the outsiders who are struggling to find work.

Also read: Emraan Hashmi on differences between Bollywood and South filmmaking - 'They have finesse, we have a lot to learn' 

Emraan’s views on nepotism

Emraan, who himself comes from a film family, said that the word ‘nepotism’ gained prominence after it was used by Kangana Ranaut during an episode of Koffee With Karan. At that time, the audience did not even know what the word meant. It was only after the episode went viral, that people looked up the word online and started building narratives around that opinion.

Emraan said that he believes there is a sense of fellowship in hate-mongering. “There’s a sense of belonging in everyone jumping on a mob-like bandwagon to bring down something. There’s a kind of intoxication in that. There’s a classic case of that in the nepotism debate. When it was first spoken on Koffee With Karan, most people didn’t even know what the word meant,” he told Indianexpress.com.

Speaking about his own experiences when he was an assistant director on the film Raaz, the actor said he has seen closely how difficult it is for outsiders to “even get an entry” into a film office. But Emraan also objected to nepotism becoming an excuse. He said, “It’s tough, but not impossible. It’s good to throw light on it, protest it, but beyond a point that protest becomes a crutch, an excuse.”

People’s reaction to nepotism

Speaking about how nepotism does not hinder other outsiders from getting work, he said that it is not true that one person is not getting work because the other person is getting it due to their film connections. “There are people who have pushed through and have gotten in… Nepotism is never going to go. You will have people who would want to push people from their own tribe. They will look out for each other, that’s embedded in our DNA. But it’s an industry where we can co-exist,” he added.

Also read: Emraan Hashmi finds the Good Kisser tag bizarre – ‘I am not good, I am the best’ 

Explaining his own experience, Emraan said that he has had the good fortune of belonging to a film family that gave him the chance to become an assistant director for Raaz and later make his film debut with Footpath, produced by his uncles Mahesh Bhatt and Mukesh Bhatt.

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