You can’t play the woman card everytime: Farah Khan

Filmmaker Farah Khan is undoubtedly one of the most sorted personalities in the entertainment fraternity. Yesterday (7 September), during the launch of her upcoming show Lip Sing Battle the 52 year old filmmaker looked ravishing in her black casual tee which read ‘No drama,’ it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that she is diagonally opposite to what she showed up in for the event! She is forever dramatic and yesterday wasn’t an exception.
The lady director is seen as a bundle of opinions but not without a tinge of fun and sarcasm in her notions. With a reputation like that whenever there is a press conference, the media turns to her for opinions and the scenario was similar yesterday as well. caught up with the bigwig and had a chat about her new series on Star Plus.
The Kangana and Hrithik Roshan controversy is soaring new heights after the former’s explosive interview on the Rajat Sharma show, Aap Ki Adalat. However, Farah refused to comment on the whole controversy (directly), however, without mentioning anyone’s name she said, “you can’t always play the woman card. For me, feminism is about equality. If there was a man and he started leaking pictures, we would have bashed him and put him behind the bars. Why is there a difference when it comes to a woman? I have myself never really faced any gender bias in the industry.”

She highlighted that the dynamics of the industry hasn’t got anything to do with the ruckus, she admitted, “people are either friends or they are not. That is a human trait so I don’t think so anything will change.”
Shifting the focus back on her TV show which is an Indian version of American series Lip Sync Battle, the conversation continued. We asked her about why the show is titled Lip Sing instead of Lip Sync and the Main Hoon Na fame director rationalised, “we did a survey before beginning the show. In that survey we found that people couldn’t pronounce the word sync and they called it sing instead so we changed the word from sync to sing. It was done so that the audience could connect with the show even more. But I still call it Lip sync.”
The choreographer turned director is very personally involved with the TV show, she revealed, “in this show I have a bigger role. I’m like a show runner and presenter. I’ve to call people and invite them, so it gets very personal here. I’m creatively involved with the show. All of us have inner madness and everyone’s crazy so I just had to choose that and pick celebrities accordingly. And by the end of the day every celebrity gets highly competitive in the show.”
Farah has done it all especially when it came to television. From judging a singing competition, a dance show, an entertainment cum talent reality series. She has also hosted a comedy series, a chat show, a cookery weekly series and the list goes on. The actress is now pretty excited about the new garb of a show runner she has donned with this one, enthused she, “I don’t do shows that I’m not comfortable doing. I’ve been part of series that have been my forte, where I can put my expertise. I can’t do a show like Khatron Ke Khiladi, because I won’t be able to do the stunts, neither a show like KBC.”
On the other hand, Farah didn’t just stick to talking about her show during the event. The motor-mouth danseuse seemed to be very pepped about the transformation in the entertainment industry with content rolling the roost and not just the star power. She affirmed, “It is true people want new and original content. As a filmmaker it doesn’t scare me. Instead it is nice to know that we now have to reinvent and give our best. Now, you can’t run a film by just putting two item songs. People don’t want to see an under-average film.”

So does that mean the director might get her foot in the web-space? She told us, “I’ve been offered to direct many web-series but I can’t find a nice script which can run for 10 episodes. Besides, I don’t want to make one, just for the sake of it. There are some really great web-series out there so if I do it, it should be really worthy.”
Being a filmmaker herself who dishes out films that can be watched with the entire family, she was evidently not happy with some of the web series which shell out a lot of sexual and abusive content, a dejected Farah voiced, “some of the Indian makers add sex and abusive content to grab eyeballs. You can’t put that on films, because your audience gets reduced so since they get liberty on the internet they do it. It is a complete wrong notion I believe.”
Produced by Fremantle Media, Lip Sing Battle will air from 16 September.