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Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan’s directorial debut The Ba***ds of Bollywood has been the talk of the town since its release a few days ago. It has been liked for its brainrot humour and the parallels it drew from real-life incidents of his life and the Hindi film industry. The show, while giving a fictional setting, gave away many Easter eggs to the audience. Here’s a list of some of the most interesting references in the series:
*Spoilers ahead*
Aryan took a pretty not-so-subtle dig at Sameer Wankhede for his 2021 arrest. The director was jailed in a drugs case by the officer at Narcotics Control Bureau, but the charges were dropped later. In of the scenes, a strikingly similar looking actor to Sameer and even dressed like him raids a Bollywood party shouting, ‘Drugs ne iss desh ko barbaad kar diya hai!’ The highlight was that he spared the non-Bollywood ‘druggie’ but arrests a star who was just standing nearby with a drink, slyly claiming that Sameer Wankhede also had an ulterior motive against the film industry. Wankhede has now approached the Delhi High Court against the Netflix series over the portrayal.
Karan Johar was unapologetically KJo in The Ba***ds of Bollywood with the self-depreciating humour. In one of the shots, the filmmaker warns the protagonist saying, ‘Don’t mess with the movie mafia’, hinting at actor Kangana Ranaut’s label for him. She called Karan the ‘flagbearer of nepotism’ many years ago, and he nailed the scene by owning up to the tags.
Ananya Panday and Siddhant Chaturvedi’s roundtable conference from 2019 has not left our minds. A reminder was an episode in Aryan’s show, when there’s a newcomers’ round table with Aasmaan (Lakshya) roasting star kid Karishma Talvar (Sahher Bambba) on her privilege. It was inspired from the real-life nepotism debate, highlighting the difference between insiders and outsiders.
Another savage scene featuring Ranveer Singh and Karan Johar was when the two meet at a party in the first episode. During the conversation, they indirectly point out at their 2023 hit film Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani, which was a saving grace for Ranveer’s career. In the scene, the filmmaker tells him, ‘My movie saved your career’, to which Ranveer wittily replies, ‘My performance saved your movie’.
In 2012, Shah Rukh Khan had a huge physical fight with a security personnel at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium during an Indian Premier League game. The actor was then banned from the stadium as he almost punched the guard when he stopped him from entering the ground. That scenario was recreated in The Ba***ds of Bollywood when a security officer stops him from entering the vanity van of Avtar Singh (Manoj Pahwa).
A very specific satirical dig was showing Kartik Aaryan and Dharma Productions’ feud fictionally. In the series, the outsider Aasmaan signs a film with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, only to get kicked out later. The same happened in real life in 2021 when Kartik was signed for Dostana 2 by the filmmaker, but was dropped from the film. In fact, the actor and filmmaker sorted everything out and are on good terms now, just like how it was shown in the show.
Did you notice that the term ‘exclusive three film deal’ was used in the series again and again. For example, the huge production house Sodahwalla Productions kept offering actors three-film deal contracts when they are not allowed to work with any other producers. This trend was first started by Yash Raj Films, and such deals were even signed by several actors, including Anushka Sharma, Ranveer Singh, Vaani Kapoor, and Parineeti Chopra.
The paan shop scene when Aasmaan goes downstairs with his father near their house in Delhi might have been an ordinary scene for many, but it is a special memory for Aryan’s father Shah Rukh Khan. The superstar was also an outsider from Delhi, who has often revealed stories about visiting paan shops, ordering meetha and saada paan, and running an account with the shopkeepers. It was a sweet mention to pay a tribute to SRK’s humble beginnings, before superstardom.
A song in The Ba***ds of Bollywood shows a Dubai-based gangster named Ghafoor (played by Arshad Warsi) trying to invest money in a Bollywood movie. Similarly, there were also rumours of underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim investing his money into films in the 90s. Moreover, in 2001, film producer Bharat Shah was even arrested for using mafia funds to back his movie, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke. The financier and producer was jailed for a year.
There are many other parallels from SRK’s films that can’t be ignored. During an award-winning speech, Aasmaan dedicates his Filmfirst award to his late father, saying, ‘This one’s for you.’ Shah Rukh also gave his first Filmfare speech after his parents’ death, when he said the exact words. Besides that, there were many other references taken from the star’s films – the cremation scene, where three family members light the pyre, taken from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Moreover, the award-show parody was inspired from his film Om Shanti Om, when actors are anticipating the winner at the film award function.
The Ba***ds of Bollywood is currently streaming on Netflix.
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