How Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, and Brahmastra dominated the Koffee with Karan Season 7 opener

For weeks on end, Karan Johar, Bollywood’s chief public strategist, teased his return to Koffee with Karan (KWK), the eponymous talk show that has now become the Indian equivalent to a gossip tabloid. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect: In the intervening, pandemic-stricken two years that KWK has been missing from our screens, the Hindi film industry has witnessed nothing sort of a celebrity wedding marathon. Alia Bhatt — Johar’s most prized protege — recently became an expecting Kapoor in what feels like the defining event of the year. Katrina Kaif wed Vicky Kaushal late last year, prompting week-long wedding celebrations that looked right out of a Karan Johar film set piece. Giving them company were the unions of Varun Dhawan, Farhan Akhtar, and Rajkummar Rao, each wedding blessing our feeds with distinct celebrity core memories (Is there anything that beats Hrithik Roshan and Akhtar retracing their steps to “Senorita” at the actor-filmmaker’s wedding? I don’t think so).

Still, what made the show’s return even more necessary was perhaps the fact that Johar is staring at two big-tickets releases — as both director (Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani) and producer (Brahmastra) — that could either be an embarrassment of riches for Dharma Productions or then, possibly sound its death knell. If there is one thing that Johar has seemingly understood about Indian audiences, it’s that a majority of Hindi film audiences go to the theaters to watch movies largely based on which celebrity has managed to gamble with their attention the longest. To hold one’s attention, a celebrity needs two things: an audience’s implicit curiosity in their daily lives and ample social currency. As it turns out, KWK is the perfect site to manufacture both of these things.

That is to say, in the last couple of seasons, Johar has developed a foolproof algorithm: a talk show that serves as a front for a film promotion junket. In that, Johar’s guests are carefully filtered based not just on their lineage but also on their upcoming Dharma filmography. The shift became entirely visible in the guest roster of the show’s last season alone: Tara Sutaria and Ananya Panday made their Koffee debuts weeks before being launched in the Johar-backed Student of the Year 2. Both Janhvi Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan had Dharma releases lined up after their respective episodes. Sidharth Malhotra, perhaps one of the most bland celebrities around, reappeared on the couch only because he was the lead of Shershaah, a Dharma production. In fact, at the time of his appearance, even Kartik Aaryan was enmeshed in the Dharma universe, about to star in the now-jinxed Dostana sequel. In each of these episodes, Johar simply had one job: lend social currency to his guests; make their personalities seem simultaneously so elusive and interesting that audiences flock in hordes to buy tickets to their films.

If Johar was confirming suspicions of KWK being a means to an end, then on the show’s seventh season, he seems insistent on cementing the show’s reputation as a Dharma talent showreel, boasting a guest list that makes up the cast of several upcoming Dharma movies. But there was something different about the season’s first episode which, on paper, saw Alia Bhatt and Ranveer Singh, the lead pair of Johar’s upcoming Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani, on the couch. Yet if you ask me, the real guests of the episode were actually Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor, newly-minted married couple more importantly, the lead pair of Brahmastra, arguably the biggest gamble of Dharma Productions.

In that, this was an episode that seeked to fulfill only one ask — warm up audiences to the idea of seeing Bhatt and Kapoor on the screen together in Brahmastra. The filmmaker using KWK episodes to promote his own films isn’t new but something felt different this time around. For one, the episode seemed geared entirely toward promoting a coupling than a film or an actor. And second, it’s worth noting that the KWK episode was dominated by Ranbir Kapoor, an actor who technically isn’t even Dharma talent (the actor’s last hit was with Rajkumar Hirani and his next film is a YRF production).

For close to an hour, Johar packaged the entire episode around the social currency that Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor together wield on the hearts, minds, and curiosity levels of Indian audiences. The episode, which at 12.2 million views, is already the most viewed episode in Indian streaming last week, followed the pattern, revealing crucial details about the pair that posed even more questions. There were rosy anecdotes about the mandated traditional transformation that Bhatt had to undergo to become a Kapoor; the supposed Bhatt and Kapoor meet-cute (which came off sounding more like an arranged matchmaking situation than a genuine romantic connection); the Maasai Mara proposal that entailed Kapoor taking Bhatt by surprise by ensuring their special moment was clicked for posterity and Instagram likes; and more crucially, the rapt storytelling that revolved around Johar’s reaction to Bhatt announcing that she was getting married to Kapoor (which took a life of its own after the internet found out that Johar repeated that same story to another publication when asked about his feelings about Bhatt’s pregnancy).

In all of this, Ranveer Singh — possibly Bollywood’s most uncontainable actor — was left to shrink his existence on the couch, as if he was nothing more than a good-looking prop, useful only when lending his support to the cause. Which in this case was displaying a willingness to agree that Kapoor and Bhatt coming together was both serendipitous and perfect. Think about it: the only time Singh was included in the conversation was when Johar recounted a seemingly adorable story about the actor helping Bhatt with selecting her wedding trousseau. For the rest of the episode, Singh was allocated only one job: be an adoring witness to the cult of the Bhatt-Kapoors.

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In fact, after sitting through the hour-long episode, I came back knowing more about Ranbir Kapoor (he sounds conservative, slightly triggered at Bhatt and Singh’s friendship, is used to getting away with doing the bare minimum in relationships, and loves a wife that knows her way with aartis?), than about Singh’s state of mind. Still, I didn’t come off the episode thinking that Ranbir Kapoor-Alia Bhatt are an exciting proposition — especially as leads of a big-budget film in the making for close to a decade. I suppose that’s the crucial difference: Brahmastra might just be that film that breaks the KWK promotional algorithm, given how much of an overkill the first episode feels like. Not only do we know too much about the coming together of Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor but more importantly, none of it can beat Ranveer Singh’s imitation of Kartik Aaryan.

Poulomi Das is a film and culture writer, critic, and programmer. Follow more of her writing on Twitter.

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