Actors are ‘insecure, not loyal’: Karan Johar
A few months ago, reports emerged that actor Janhvi Kapoor, whose career was previously being managed by Karan Johar’s Dharma Cornerstone Artist Agency (DCAA), changed her agency and moved to Collective Artist Network. Not just Janhvi, many actors in the past have changed agencies despite being with them for many years, such as Ranveer Singh and Parineeti Chopra, who left YRF’s talent management agency. Actors are highly dependent on their agencies to bring them the best possible opportunities, but in a business as competitive as this, actors aren’t loyal to anyone, as per Karan Johar.
In a recent interview with Sarthak Ahuja, Karan said that talent management is a ‘thankless job’ as ‘nobody is really loyal’. He added, “Every two years, people are shifting from one agency to another because they are so insecure that they feel we are time-bound. Nobody is loyal in this business; actors just keep hopping and skipping. So, you put two years of your life into a talent and they suddenly move somewhere else and then they don’t like it there and they want to come back to you. This is a vicious circle.”
Karan said that in this business, it is very difficult to make money just from artist associations, so people are now looking at equity investments. Many talent agencies, he said, are finding equity partnerships with their talent and are trying to monetise those partnerships. “Just commission on artists is going to give you nothing because artists are nobodies. They are absolutely nobodies - voh kisi ke nahi hain,” he said.
Karan said that he got into talent management because it comes naturally to him and said that 90 per cent of this business is about ‘handling people, egos, insecurities and it’s not easy’. He added, “If you look at talent management as a business opportunity, nothing is going to happen.” “After being in the business for 31 years, I have become Zen about success and failure because I feel like my joy and sorrow cannot be the result of my success and failure, because then I will be in an ICU,” he said. Karan’s agency handles actors like Rohit Saraf, Sara Ali Khan, Shanaya Kapoor, Rasha Thadani, among many others.
Karan Johar, in the same conversation, also spoke about his partnership with Adar Poonawalla and said that Adar might exit the business at some point. “I think this was a move towards diversification, but with him, it’s a balance. I’m sure at some point, he is looking for an exit out of this deal because he is a businessman and this is a business. But also, I think he is a lover of the arts. But he is very clear. Maybe the return at that point, after eight or 10 years or whenever he is looking at it, is not magnificently huge but enough to have satiated him, to have satiated his creativity or rather his diversification needs as well as given him that kind of glory,” he said.
