The co-host of the second season of ‘Comedy Nights Bachao’ Krushna Abhishek has come in defence of his show after actress Tannishtha Chatterjee alleged that she was fired with racist jokes on it. Yesterday Tannishtha said that her dark skin colour was joked about in the show after which she walked out mid way. Krushna Abhishek has however apologised to the ‘Parched’ actress.
Woven around the concept of roasting celebrity guests, ‘Comedy Nights Bachao Taaza’ faced ire after Tannishtha termed jokes regressive and racist. Accompanied by director of ‘Parched’ Leena Yadav and co-star Radhika Apte, she visited the show to promote her movie but got miffed when the comedians only targeted her dark skin tone for jokes. Post this she wrote a Facebook post slamming the show’s format and saying that the jokes were a result of deep rooted prejudices against dark skinned people in the society.
Speaking on the entire furore, Krushna told media said that the team doesn’t wish to hurt anyone deliberately and if Tannishtha felt offended he is deeply apologetic. Defending the show’s format he said that although the show’s concept is that of a roast, they just don’t go about saying anything to anyone.
The comedian and actor revealed that before the show started he had asked Tannishtha if she had seen it and was familiar with the concept. When the lady answered in the negative, Krushna said he explained the format to her using the example of the AIB roast.
“I told her that since it's a roast, there will be some leg pulling, but we don't insult. Had we been insulting, the show won't have come so far,” Krushna added.
The actress has said that she had some inkling of a roast courtesy "Saturday Night Live" show, and that with "Comedy Nights Bachao", she was looking forward to be 'roasted' as her perception was that a roast is "a celebratory humour at someone's expense" and "a mock counter to a toast".
Also Read: Channel apologises to Tannishtha Chatterjee for ‘roast’, she says it’s about the prejudice
Pointing out that the only thing they could roast about a dark-skinned actress was "of course her dark skin", she said in a Facebook post: "This was an entirely novel understanding of roast that equates itself with bullying. And to my utmost horror, I soon realised that the only quality they found worth roasting about in me was my skin tone. It began with, 'Aap ko jamun bahut pasand hoga zaroor...?'"
Krushna said the new second season of "Comedy Nights Bachao" has been mellowed down due to its film integrations.
"When a show comes, 90 per cent people praise the show, but then 10 per cent say they didn't like it. So maybe she didn't like the format," said the nephew of comedy star Govinda.
Krushna said there are actors who take roasts sportingly.
"When Varun Dhawan came for 'Dilwale', Varun himself came up to me and said that he is very excited and looking forward to the roast. Even SRK chose to come to our show for 'Fan'.
"I don't know what hurt Tannishtha, because I wasn't performing then. But I apologise if it has hurt her, though it wasn't a deliberate attempt," he added.
(With IANS Inputs)
