Aryan Khan, Shah Rukh Khan’s elder son, is stepping into the Hindi film industry — but not as an actor like his father. Instead, he makes his debut as a filmmaker with a new Netflix India show premiering this Thursday. The Ba*ds of Bollywood brings together two powerful narratives: the legacy of Mumbai’s nepotism-driven film world and the disruptive outsider energy that once defined SRK’s own rise in the 1990s.
Ahead of the premiere, SCREEN sat down with the show’s lead cast — Lakshya, Kill’s Raghav Juyal, The Empire’s Sahher Bambba, and Anya Singh (Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, Stree 2) — for an exclusive chat on what caught them off guard about Aryan Khan, the experience of working on a Shah Rukh Khan-backed project, and whether, as outsiders, they believe the show captures Bollywood’s reality.
Raghav and Lakshya, during the promotions of Kill last year, it felt like you had to bite your tongue whenever Shah Rukh Khan came up, since you couldn’t mention The Bads of Bollywood. How difficult was it to keep that under wraps?*
Lakshya: Now you know why we were so hesitant. Because we knew we’d done something solid, but it was very difficult to keep it to ourselves. But we tried very hard to supress our emotions because otherwise we’d have gotten suppressed.
Raghav: If not for my mom muttering “Nazar lag jayegi,” I would have confessed everything.
Sanchit Saraswat