Koffee with Karan is reputed for its candid celebrity interviews. The talk show, hosted by Karan Johar sees celebrities spill salacious secrets sometimes even throwing some major shade and of course ‘spilling some beans’. Ordinarily, the infamous rapid-fire round is the epicentre of controversy. However, on the 25th of November, the show hosted half-siblings Janhvi and Arjun Kapoor. The episode kicked off like any other, the recently debuted actress opened up about an array of topics ranging from lighthearted, like addressing dating rumours, to emotional and deep like the impact of losing her mother, the late Sridevi.
During what was meant to be a lighthearted game, with pop culture quiz questions and fun challenges, the two were challenged to phone a relative, and the first one who could get them to say “Hey Karan, what’s up?” would win the challenge. In her attempt to win, Janhvi rang Arjun’s sister Anshula, in friendly competitive spirit; Arjun proceeded to joke that he would not return home if Anshula said the words that would have allowed Janhvi to win. Following this, Anshula didn’t say “Hey Karan, what’s up?” and has resultantly been receiving extremely unsettling threats such as murder and rape following the airing of the episode.
The day after the episode aired, Janhvi posted a throwback picture with Anshula on Instagram of the two of them at on a rollercoaster, clearly enjoying themselves captioned “#tbt to the first but clearly not the last roller coaster we’ll be on together. I love you ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️⚫️⚫️⚫️” The post received over 1000 comments, majoritively negative towards Anshula and speculative of their family relations.
Replying to one of the comments on the post, Janhvi clarifies that Anshula wasn’t acting maliciously by not saying “Hey Karan, what’s up?”, she simply couldn’t hear anything and the two clarified the situation post-filming.
Despite the clarification, Anshula continued being trolled and threatened, consequently leading to Arjun Kapoor finally breaking his silence yesterday out of frustration with the situation. Karan Johar reposted the tweet, echoing his sentiments.
I completely agree with you Arjun! Was a harmless fun game and did not warrant this response! People genuinely need to stop this intense negativity…. https://t.co/XITqp1mN6A
— Karan Johar (@karanjohar) November 27, 2018
During the interview segment of the show, Janhvi and Arjun spoke on how the tragedy of her mother’s passing brought the kids together; and how facing hardship has them made very protective of each other. During a conversation with Priyanka Chopra for a Facebook live session ‘Social For Good’, Janhvi spoke out about the effects of online bullying and social media trolling, stating: “People are always quick to judge on social media… My sister recently got trolled on social media for something silly that happened on Koffee With Karan. She started getting rape threats and it was weird to me because people on social media are faceless. They feel like they can have an opinion which can sometimes cross a moral line. So when I do put stuff up on social media I do think about that. I feel protective towards them, what people are going to say about them.”