My dear Lavanya,
I am afraid you too are again missing the point completely.
These interviews of Rajat's are not meant for the same audience as the ones for
Pink, or for any of the new era multiplex films. Not that the film interviews I regularly read in the Times of India, including by AB for his films, are very interesting or erudite. They are usually the same old balderdash, with the same fake statements. They have to be.
Besides, those who feature in those interviews are mostly frauds thru and thru, and they can be as crude as the producers want them to be with the likes of Kapil Sharma and worse. Nor does what they dish out now have anything to do with what they were or even are. AB, for example, was no shining light for women's empowerment in his salad days, but a pucca MCP. Now of course he holds forth as the New Age Sensitive Man. And he talks round and round and round, while the interviewer genuflects before him, but still he rarely says anything on a really sticky point. So I take all that stuff he dishes out with a whole ladleful of salt, and I am almost never impressed by it.
Rajat's interviews are meant for the TRP crowd that Ekta always targets. That does not include either of us. Nor is she likely to be at all concerned about whether you or I liked it, and
you clearly do not. So the changes you see here are
sui generis, and you need not feel sorry that you spoke against his first interview!😉
As for me, I liked it very much because I was not expecting a la di dah, highbrow interview. Which incidentally, would have done
Chandra Nandini no good.
I was very pleased because of what it will almost surely do for both Rajat and Ekta. And the things that irritate you are irrelevant in this context, especially your points 1&2. What on earth can Rajat or Ekta do about those matters? She cannot coach the press as well !
I am a pragmatist, and what I can see is that Ekta wants the viewers to feel that Rajat has every good quality under the sun, and in the first place the qualities of humility, loyalty and
vinamrata in general. They, and especially the ladies, must feel that he is a good boy, with good manners, polite to a fault, forgiving of even those who have harmed him, and a perfect family man to boot.
You might have preferred the rough edged, brash Rajat, but then you are not in the business of selling
Chandra Nandini. Ekta is. And if Rajat had continued on those lines, he would have not have helped the show. And no, he does not have a perpetual frown for the reason that you have surmised. He has it because he is straining to listen to the question over all that deafening background racket.
He has not been given a script; he has very likely been advised on broad lines by a professional, which was the right thing to do in the interests of both Rajat and the show.
I thought he was perfectly articulate and in fact voluble, and he fielded the questions he did not want to answer, like whether he had an ideal role he would want to play, as per the maxim of Jim Hacker in
Yes Minister: he simply ignored the question and said whatever he wanted to say!😉
When he was demolishing the typecasting question, I thought he was very forceful, and the words poured out like a swift stream that must have left the questioner feeling as if she had been dunked in a waterfall. And the point regarding preparation for a role, that more than training, what an actor needs to do is to keep his mind open and be a very keen observer, was very well put across.
I have done a lot of public speaking, and giving a press interview is much the same thing as fielding the Q&A session after the speech, You have to be nimble with both your thoughts and your expressions, and you must never, but never give the impression that a question has riled you or thrown you off your stride. Rajat did very well on both those counts.
He needed a makeover because the earlier version was simply not working. Nor would it have helped him as he moves along in his career. Moreover, he can clearly tailor his words to suit the level of the journalist. His Hindustan Times interview was a clear case in point.
Shyamala Aunty
Originally posted by: Sabdabhala
HI AUNTY
I DID SEE THIS INTERVIEW WITHIN SOME TIME OF IT BEING POSTED HERE
BUT UNLIKE WHAT YOU SAID, I WASNT SHOCKED, AND IF I WAS IT WASNT BECAUSE OF THE CONTENT OF THE INTERVIEW
CHANDRA NANDINI IS THE FIRST LAUNCH THAT I HAVE SEEN, AND SO ALSO THE INTERVIEWS. AND I HAVE FOLLOWED THEM QUITE CLOSELY, LIKE ALL OF US
BY THE TIME I SAW THIS, I HAD SEEN ALL THE OTHERS SINCE THE FIRST ONE, AND, QUITE FRANKLY, I AM A BIT SICK OF THE SAME QUESTIONS, THE SAME ANSWERS, SO MUCH SO THAT I'M CONTEMPLATING NOT SEEING ANY FURTHER INTERVIEWS 😆
I AM NOT REALLY COMPARING, BUT RECENTLY I SAW 2-3 INTERVIEWS OF AMITABH BACHCHAN AND THE THREE GIRLS FOR THE MOVIE PINK AND THE CONTRAST CANNOT BE STARKER -
1. THE QUALITY OF THE INTERVIEWERS FOR CN IS GHASTLY, AND THERE ARE HARDLY ANY EXCEPTIONS.
2. THEY OBVIOUSLY DONT DO ANY PRIOR HOMEWORK, AND HENCE KEEP ASKING THE SAME 2-3 QUESTIONS
AND I CERTAINLY AGREE WITH YOU THAT RAJAT HAS BEEN EFFECTIVELY TUTORED. TO ME IT ALMOST SEEMED LIKE HE'S BEEN GIVEN A SCRIPT 😆 HE JUST KEEPS REPEATING THE SAME LINES, AND WHAT ELSE CAN HE DO, POOR THING, BECAUSE EVERY BLESSED INTERVIEWER THAT HE MEETS HAS THE SAME BORING QUESTIONS
I KNOW THAT I MADE A STATEMENT AFTER THE FIRST INTERVIEW THAT HE NEEDS HELP IN HANDLING THE MEDIA, BUT THEY SEEM TO HAVE BUTCHERED THE POOR GUY 😕 I AM NOT SURE IF THIS APPEARANCE OF HUMILITY IS AN IMPROVEMENT OR A DETERIORATION. WHAT I HAD IN MIND WAS JUST A SMOOTHENING OF THE ROUGH EDGES, BUT THEY SEEM TO HAVE CHANGED THE PERSONA IN TOTO 😡 I THINK FOR ME RAJAT ORIGINAL - THE RAJAT WHO GAVE THE FIRST BRASH INTERVIEW WAS BETTER, MUCH BETTER THAN THE 2.0 VERSION. AND I AM ACTUALLY FEELING SORRY NOW THAT I EVER SPOKE AGAINST THAT INTERVIEW 😆
THIS RAJAT HAS A PERPETUAL FROWN AND A DEFINITE LET-ME-OUT-OF-THIS-PAAGALKHANA LOOK 😆
AT THIS MOMENT ALL MY SYMPATHIES ARE WITH RAJAT AND I JUST HOPE THIS MADNESS ENDS QUICKLY THE SHOW STARTS SO THAT SANITY CAN BE RESTORED
NO OFFENCE TO ANYONE'S FEELINGS. I JUST WROTE WHAT CAME TO MY MIND
QUOTE=sashashyam]
RAJAT'S UNQUESTIONABLE TOUR DE FORCE OF AN INTERVIEW
My dear Anjali, Khushi, Lashykanna, Kritika, Manasi, and all the others who have exulted over this interview of Rajat's,
Anjali, thanks a lot, kiddo, for having dug this out for us. For which channel was it? Or was it a group interview, which is what it sounded like?
I would not have missed it for anything, for it was totally unlike the first two Chandra Nandini interviews, and even the shorter, more recent ones.
Listening to it was like seeing a whole landscape suddenly illuminated by a brilliant flash of lightning. You see things you could never see even in broad daylight. Let me explain what I mean by that.
Rajat here is like quicksilver - always in motion, always alert and on the ball, but again like quicksilver, none of the interviewers could pin him down on any point or any question, positive or negative, When Lavanya sees this, she is going to get the shock of her life!😉
But my dearest girls, I think that most of you have missed what is the key take away from this interview. It is not, as Khushi sees it, that Rajat has been revealed to be "a most humble & down to earth person." In fact I very much hope he is no such thing, humble, I mean. Humility is a virtue he can well do without.
But the appearance of humility, now that is something else, and is a major plus under these circumstances. That was out there in full force all thru the 13:13 minutes of this interview.
The periodically folded hands, the bending forward towards the questioner looking all attention (and not just because of the ambient noise!), the frequent use of Sirji... The eager young face, looking almost like that of a schoolboy, ready to answer any and all questions.
The reference to himself as a pyada, a pawn on the shatranj ki bisaat, with so many other more powerful pieces ranged behind him, not to speak of the most powerful of them all, the player. A pawn that moves only one step at a time, and limits itself to that one move. For him now, it is Chandra Nandini.
That it is not for him to comment on Ekta's approach to her TV productions, but only to fulfil the responsibility she has placed on him. That she is his maalik and he obeys her without question. When she told him 3 months before Jodha Akbar ended Beta, kahin mat jaana. I have something for you.. he did exactly what she wanted and stayed. What is important for him is faith and trust, not contracts.
That he is happy for those who are glad when they are able to badmouth him. He prefers to peacefully ignore them.
Now, could we ever have imagined that there was this Rajat 2.0 tucked away inside the Rajat we saw in 2013, at the launch of Jodha Akbar? Or, moving to the present, the Rajat at the recent, turbulent Delhi interview, or even the later joint one with Shweta? No, we could not.
And we would be right, for he was not there. Rajat 2.0 is a new creation, not an archaeological discovery😉. And a spectacular creation!
Even as she defended him stoutly and convincingly in public, Ekta clearly wanted Rajat to put his best foot forward for her, and his, latest baby, Chandra Nandini. And she clearly knew how to achieve this.Whence both the unprecedented media exposure for the show, mostly via Rajat. Whence also what amounts to a complete image makeover for Rajat, who is both the lynchpin of Chandra Nandini and the one who needs such a makeover.
Result: someone in Ekta's team has taken charge of Rajat and primed him, in broad terms but very effectively, about how to present himself to the media, and run rings round them. And Rajat, being extremely intelligent and thus a quick study, has picked up the ball and run with it to very good effect. Which, as I had noted earlier on this thread, is exactly what I had wanted for him. To say that I am delighted would be an understatement!
The rest of this tour de force of an interview can be divided into a few major themes, which he has used elsewhere as well, but not as comprehensively and so effectively. It is late now, but I will try and flag them here in brief tomorrow.
All in all, I was fascinated to see how very smoothly articulate and media-savvy our shy, withdrawn, at times downright irritable boy has become. But then is he not a superb actor, who can slip effortlessly into the skin of any character, even that of a media darling?
More tomorrow.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Edited by sashashyam - 9 years ago
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