Kiara Advani Says Karan Johar Was Wrongly Blamed For Nepotism

Actress Kiara Advani is of the opinion that filmmaker Karan Johar has been wrongly blamed for nepotism in the Bollywood. The actress said that even though Johar has been targeted for working with and launching star kids in Bollywood, she found support in him when she was struggling and was getting rejected by designers. 

Advani opened up about this while promoting her upcoming film ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2’ with Karthik Aryan durinv an interview with Film Companion. Advani had nothing but sweet words for Johar and designer Manish Malhotra. She said, "These are people who are supremely successful, but they didn’t have that apprehension, they didn’t come to me only because I was successful.” 

Advani then mentioned that during her initial years in Bollywood, she asked her agency to pitch her in for a Karan Johar movie, but they didn’t push for her. She said that it was just by chance that she encountered and got casted in Johar’s ‘Lust Stories’ in 2018. Talking about Malhotra, Advani said that despite being rejected by many designers, he supported her. 

“At that point, there was this thing, and Manish is one of those people who never looked at it like that. He never looked at it like, ‘I’ll give somebody something because they’re successful’. Even Karan. I know he gets so much hate for nepotism and all of that, but he took me when I was a nobody, and nobody told him to,” she said. Kiara Advani said that even though she now understood that “at the end of the day, this is a business,” she felt that “certain people who’ve reached great heights in their fields, they don’t have to live up to this social norm.”

Over the years, Malhotra has dressed countless celebrities on and off screen. He even dressed Advani in a gorgeous lehenga for her sister Ishita Advani’s wedding in Goa in 2022. Advani was last seen in ‘Shershaah’ with her rumoured boyfriend Sidharth Malhotra.