‘Why do you resort to abuses?’: Shekhar Suman says Samay Raina doesn’t need expletives

It’s an interesting time for comedy on YouTube. Shekhar Suman’s satirical-cum-talk show Shekhar Tonite, which releases a new episode every week, co-exists every month with Samay Raina’s roast show India’s Got Latent, which drops an episode every two weeks, also on Netflix India. Speaking on Screen Spotlight, Shekhar claims that his brand of comedy is poles apart from that of Samay.

“I haven’t watched enough of Samay, but he’s very good in the latest video of him that I’ve watched. His content is extremely, extremely good,” says Shekhar. “Except that my advice to him is, why do you resort to abuses? Your content is so good that it doesn’t require those expletives also. I guess this whole new generation is too ‘cool’, and they think it’s okay to abuse. So, to each his own. It’s just my suggestion that without the expletives, you’d be equally effective,” adds the actor-cum-host.

Shekhar’s advice to Samay comes a year after season 1 of India’s Got Latent was pulled down YouTube after an inappropriate remark made by the latter’s fellow YouTuber and guest panelist Ranveer Allahbadia. That also led to massive online trolling and three FIRs being filed against both among others. Even senior comics like Sunil Pal have slammed Samay’s show for the extensive use of abuses, at least in season 1.

While Shekhar maintains his brand of comedy is starkly different from Samay’s, he also doesn’t consider him in the company of Kapil Sharma, who hosts the Great Indian Kapil Show on Netflix India. “What Kapil does is sketch comedy. That’s as far removed from my craft as chalk is from cheese. Zameen aur aasman ki doori hai usmei. He does what he’s good at. I do what I’m good at and comfortable with. You have to pursue your vocation. Satire is more academic. I feel it has more intellect involved. That craft is straight from the hip and off the cuff. So ya, all of us are surviving,” says Shekhar.

Kapil Sharma on The Great Indian Kapil Show. (Photo: Kapil Sharma/Instagram)

He’s all praise for Sunil Grover, who’s made a name for himself by mimicking the likes of veteran poet Javed Akhtar, actors Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and late Kadar Khan among others on The Great Indian Kapil Show. “He’s doing a great job. As an actor, it’s fun to transform into somebody else,” says Shekhar, before recalling a similar mimic’s role that he did in 2009 show Tedi Baat Shekhar Ke Saath, which he also produced.

“I played three to five characters a day. I was also the producer. I remember there was a watchman outside the studio who’d stop me every time I changed and walked in. ‘Who are you? Where are you going?’ I’d say, ‘It’s me!’ He’d say, ‘Sir, you change your getup so many times.’ But it was always fun,” Shekar recalled, laughing.

Shekhar Suman on his comedy career

Interestingly, Kapil Sharma rose to prominence when he won season 3 of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge in 2007, which was judged by Shekhar and Navjot Singh Sidhu. While Navjot continues to appear on The Great Indian Kapil Show, he’s now joined by Archana Puran Singh, who’s also co-judged two comedy shows with Shekhar — Comedy Circus (2008-2010) and India’s Laughter Champion (2022).

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But Shekhar admits he doesn’t miss that job anymore. “Not at all. I think it was just a phase. As an actor, I’m more inclined to doing something more serious than comedy. That was a small part of my journey. I did that, enjoyed that, and got out of it. But it’s not something I’d, given the choice, like to do,” he says.

Shekhar Suman and Navjot Singh Sidhu on The Great Indian Laughter Challenge.

Shekhar also points out that he’s an actor first, and a comic later. “I haven’t followed any school. First of all, I haven’t confined myself to comedy. Secondly, I don’t relate to comedy as much as I do to satire. Now, that’s a different form. Movers & Shakers wasn’t a comedy show, it was a sociopolitical satire. That’s a completely different craft,” he says, referring to 1997 popular late-night talk show.

Once hailed as “the Amitabh Bachchan of television”, Shekhar Suman made several heads turn with Movers & Shakers. But the talk show went off air a year after Amitabh Bachchan himself transitioned to TV with his seminal quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati. But Shekhar refuses he didn’t quit his late-night show because of the juggernaut that was KBC.

“I just wanted to do it for a specific period of time. I wanted to explore my acting abilities. In fact, somebody asked me why I left Movers & Shakers, I said because I was good at it. I was getting better at it. That’d lead to complacency and me doing nothing else. So, it was very important for me to move away from it and take newer challenges,” says Shekhar.

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While he’s known to be one of the leading faces in comedy on Indian television, with even seminal fiction shows like Dekh Bhai Dekh (1993), Shekhar doesn’t feel he hasn’t gotten his due for other work. “I got a lot of praise for Heeramandi, Reporter, and Utsav. Whenever I’ve done some serious stuff, I’ve been praised. And I have some stuff coming along. So, hopefully that would be praised as well,” he adds. Shekhar will be next seen in the sand mafia thriller Reporting Live, also starring Parineeti Chopra and Amol Palekar.