Johny Lever is undeniably one of the best comedians and a good actor in Bollywood. With his spectacular performances, he has been entertaining the audience. There is a reason why he is a part of almost all the 90s’ and 2000s’ Bollywood films. However, in the past few years, he has been on the big screen less than he used to be. Speaking of the same, Johny said that “insecure actors” demanded that they be given comic scenes as well, to avoid a scenario where he would walk away with all the adulation.
It all happened during his interaction with ETimes. Citing the example of Baazigar, he said that the film ‘didn’t have a writer’. He stated that he had to come up with all the comedy scenes himself while giving the credit to ‘youthful exuberance’.
The portal quoted Lever saying, “I turn down work because the writing is bad these days. You speak of Baazigar… That film had no writer, it was just me. I came up with all the punches. Those were good days, we used to work hard. But these days, we don’t have (comedy) writers. It’s like, ‘Johny bhai will handle it’. That’s not how it works. We need a blueprint first.”
Elaborating his take further, Johny asserted, “Comedy was given respect back in the day. These days, there’s hardly any comedy in movies. Back in the day, I used to get such positive responses; my scenes would become the highlight of the movie. Sometimes, the heroes would feel threatened and my scenes would be edited. They used to watch how the audience would react to my scenes and feel insecure. They started asking writers to come up with comedy scenes for them, as well. The writers would start distributing comedy scenes. And my roles became smaller and smaller, which is what you’re seeing now. Comedy is gone.”
Coming to the professional front, the 65-year-old actor recently appeared in the Rohit Shetty directorial Cirkus, which performed poorly at the box office.
