Karan Johar On 'Student Of The Year': I Started Shooting And I Was Like, ‘Why Is This Script So bad?’

On the latest episode of 'Koffee With Karan', host Karan Johar shared his initial inhibitions while making 'Student of the Year', a film that was the launch pad of  Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, and Sidharth Malhotra.  

While speaking to his guests Sidharth Malhotra and Vicky Kaushal, Karan recalled going through self-doubt just days after they began shooting the movie. When discussing a ‘thirsty’ scene in which Sidharth’s naked body was drenched in water, Karan asked him what else he expected from the movie. “What did you think Student of the Year was about? The screenplay? There was no scene and no scope for performance. None of them won any debut award. Ayushmann Khurrana won every debut award,” he said.

When Sidharth said Karan brought depth to the character, the director refused to entertain the idea. “Which depth you had in the character? Which film are you talking about?”

Karan further said, “For 'Student of the Year', I had to come down to the brass tacks, that’s the only way people would see. I remember four days into me shooting, I was sitting with Abhishek Varman. He was my creative director on the film. And I was like, ‘why are we making this film?’ He said ‘huh?’ I said, ‘Have you read the script?’ He said, ‘Karan what are you doing? You are the director, why are you saying such things?’ Four days into the shoot I read the script cover to cover and I thought…,” at this, Sidharth interjected and said he was ‘undervaluing’ his work and mentioned all the good bits from the movie. But Karan said that the film that was eventually made was ‘very different’ from what they had written. “I don’t know what I was doing. I think I was drunk or something. I started shooting this film and I was like, ‘Why is this script so bad?’ Karan accepted that at the end, it turned out a ‘fun and entertaining watch’.

Karan also recalled an oophole in the movie and says that Sidharth was supposed to be a middle-class boy but was always decked up in Gucci and Prada outfits. To logically explain it, Karan came up with the plot point that Sidharth’s character earned medals at school and bought outfits by selling all that gold. Of course, he was quickly told how that made no sense. “So my production designer Amrita said, ‘Karan you know these medals are not real gold’. I said how to justify why his wardrobe is so awesome?”

When Vicky asked him how he finally justified it, Karan said, “I didn’t. I said just f*ck it now. The moment I wrote ‘directed by Karan Johar’, I realised no one is going to look for logic here. It’s fine, they’ll go with the flow.”