Naseeruddin Shah mocks ‘immature’ Bollywood stars for having entourages: ‘They like to make a statement, like a shahenshah’

Naseeruddin Shah joined his wife Ratna Pathak Shah in mocking movie stars who can't function without an entourage.

New Delhi | June 1, 2023 10:28 AM IST

3 min read

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Naseeruddin Shah. (Photo: Prashant Nadkar)

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Actor Naseeruddin Shah mirrored his wife, actor Ratna Pathak Shah’s recent comments about stars and their entourages. He said that he finds behaviour like this ‘immature’. In an interview, the veteran actor said that he has never felt the need to have a squad of assistants around him, and has relied on one manager his entire career.

In an interview with Film Companion, Naseerudin was asked if he agrees with what his wife recently said about star relying heavily on their entourages. He said that this is like a show of strength more than anything else. “I don’t see the need to have these people hanging around me, I never have. Shabana, earlier in my career, would advice me to get a public relations man, and I said, ‘Why? I don’t need a public relations guy. I can handle my public relations, I’m not terribly interested in it in any case.'”

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He added, “I didn’t have a personal makeup man for many years, until it became… I was doing several movies at the same time, all movies I’d rather forget, sometimes two shifts a day, travelling from Alibaug to Madh Island and back, that kind of thing. So, I realised that I can’t be having a different makeup man each time. I zeroed in on this one person, Jairaj, who was an assistant to one of the makeup people. He’s been with me since, he’s even my manager now, and he’s the only one I need.”

Stars like to make a ‘statement’ when they arrive, the actor said. “It’ll be like the ‘shahenshah’ arriving, ‘hoshiyar’… I don’t think of myself as a star, and I find a lot of the behaviour of stars rather immature,” he said, as he mimed the arrival of a star on set.

Previously, also in an interview with Film Companion, Ratna had remarked about ‘silly’ practice of having large entourages, and said that this only makes a person more ‘self-absorbed’. She said, ““I have seen actors on plane won’t even ask for a cup of coffee. The coffee is brought by an assistant, assistant opens the cup, actor takes sip, hands it back to assistant. What are you? A 3-month-old child? That you can’t even hold a cup? This level of dependence?”

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