Maniesh Paul has offered a rare account of the boundaries he set as one of Hindi cinema’s busiest award-show hosts, including a standing refusal to turn Katrina Kaif’s early struggles with Hindi into comedy. Speaking in an interview with Zoom, the actor and television presenter said channels would sometimes instruct hosts to build such segments into their shows, a direction he declined to follow.
Katrina’s first years in films were marked by frequent public ridicule over her limited fluency, with hosts coaxing her to pronounce words and audiences laughing at the result. Paul said the device always felt tired to him.
The brief he turned down
“I never ridiculed her Hindi. I would, in fact, think it was a very boring concept,” he said. “She doesn’t know Hindi, don’t overdo it or embarrass her by saying things like, ‘Yeh bolke dikhao.'”
- What channels asked: segments pushing Katrina to speak Hindi for laughs
- What Paul refused: any device that embarrassed a guest for easy applause
- What he promised instead: three minutes of laughter delivered in his own style
When channels kept pressing, he said he offered them the same outcome through different material: “You want fun, right? You want three minutes of laughter, I will get it done, but in my style.” Entertainment, in his view, did not require making a guest uncomfortable.
Why his refusal still matters
The anecdote is a small window into how television entertainment worked during the years Katrina was building her stardom. Language gags were reliable filler for live formats, and presenters were often the ones instructed to deliver them. Paul’s account suggests an individual host could say no, even to a channel, without losing the job that required being funny on command.
The payoff, he said, was trust. Katrina would feel at ease when he was hosting, and that comfort helped turn a working acquaintance into friendship. The two had appeared together in Tees Maar Khan, alongside Akshay Kumar, which Paul described as his first film with Katrina on set.
A wider line on private lives
Paul extended the same principle to celebrities’ personal affairs. He recalled productions suggesting references to an actress’s breakup when a former partner was on stage. His method was quiet: listen to the instruction, then leave it unused, betting that the suggestion would be forgotten by the time the show mattered. His priority, he said, was entertaining the audience rather than trading in discomfort.
The remarks arrive as conversations about what is fair game in entertainment have shifted — audiences are quicker to notice when a joke depends on a performer’s vulnerability. Paul’s story is a reminder that the professional choice on stage is rarely between humour and silence. There is usually a third option: make them laugh on the host’s own terms.
Paul was recently seen in The Vvaan – Force of the Forrest with Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia.
Source: News18
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