More than two decades after Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Poo remains one of Hindi cinema’s most recognisable screen personas. Yet the role that became a shorthand for Kareena Kapoor Khan’s early stardom was not one she immediately trusted. In the latest episode of Koffee with Karan, Karan Johar and Kareena revisited how the high-camp character was cast, doubted and then absorbed into her filmography.
The casting instinct
Johar recalled first noticing Kareena at a party when she was 17. The attitude she carried in that room convinced him she was right for Poo, a part he has described as an extension of his own personality.
“I think Poo is my alter ego; Poo is me,” Johar said.
Kareena said she built the performance by watching the director closely. “Karan used to do everything, and I just copied him in every shot and followed him to a T,” she added.
The process was not invisible on set. Kareena remembered Shah Rukh Khan asking, during filming, whether Johar would really give her that much creative freedom. Johar also said Shah Rukh had earlier warned that the exaggerated humour was landing only with its director and lead actor; such a high-camp, strange-line character was not common for a mainstream Bollywood film in 2001.
Why it matters now
The retrospective is useful because it captures how a defining role is rarely an obvious bet. The conversation added several details:
- Johar picked Kareena from an attitude moment at 17, before the role had a proven template.
- Poo was written as Johar’s “alter ego,” which gave Kareena a direct model to copy.
- Shah Rukh Khan initially found the high-camp humour too insular for a mainstream release.
- Kareena’s father, Randhir Kapoor, compared her performance to Johnny Lever.
Kareena worried about what Poo would do for her career. Johar said he had to reassure her that audiences would respond. The result was not just one popular character; it was a lasting association. As Johar put it, she was Poo for about eight movies afterward because the part “didn’t leave her system.”
That context also sharpens the films she turned down. Saif Ali Khan was disappointed when she passed on Kal Ho Naa Ho, and Saif revealed she had also turned down Race. She pointed to destiny: the two later fell in love while making Tashan and married in 2012. The Poo conversation, in other words, sits inside a larger arc of professional choices and personal history.
The legacy
Poo’s journey is a small case study in Hindi cinema’s relationship with high-camp. A role Kareena was unsure about became a defining filmography thread. For readers who follow the archive as closely as the new releases, this is a reminder that the parts actors resist can sometimes outlast the parts they choose carefully.
Source: India Weekly
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