Shekhar Suman remembers Atal Bihari Vajpayee telling him never to stop Movers and Shakers, was told ‘you are doing a brilliant job’

Movers and Shakers had Shekhar Suman impersonating several politicians of the time. He also interviewed people on the show. Shekhar thought that if he would plainly talk about politics to people, they might not want to hear about it. Hence, he decided to add satire to it to make it an interesting watch.

“Politics is a drab thing, nobody wants to hear it. So, I thought about making it a political satire because who would listen to me if I will only talk about politics. That is when I came up with the idea of impersonating political figures, and I started playing Lalu Prasad Yadav, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rabri Devi, and Sonia Gandhi. I enjoyed doing that show. It was an experiment for me,” said Shekhar.

And, this experiment paid off for the actor as the show became a huge hit and even the then PM of the country, Atal Bihari Vajpayee asked Shekhar to never stop doing the show.

Shekhar narrated, “Once Atal Bihari Vajpayee stopped his car and told me, ‘Whenever you say something about me or you impersonate me, I laugh the most.’ He told me, ‘You are doing a brilliant job, don’t ever stop this show.’ After hearing this, I felt like retiring because what would you want more than words of praise from your country’s prime minister? People should have that kind of courage.”

However, Shekhar Suman is not sure if he can similarly host Movers and Shakers today as he did earlier. “People have become intolerant. Then we could say things the way we wanted to say without any filters. It was because people had that kind of humour in them that they could tolerate the jokes. There was no social media also if some even wanted to protest against it. Now, it is not just social media, standup comedians are facing legal action as well,” the actor opined.