EXCLUSIVE: Karan Johar reveals what Koffee With Karan means to him: 'I find people asking me more about KWK than about my movies'

Filmmaker Karan Johar is back on the coffee couch! Season 7 of Koffee With Karan aired on Thursday on Disney+ Hotstar with Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani co-stars Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt. With the new season starting with a bang, one can expect many A-list celebrities from not just Bollywood but down South as well. Speaking to Bollywood Hungama recently, the filmmaker talked about what the show means to him.

When asked what the show has meant to him for the past 18 years, Karan says, "I think that it's done much more than I ever expected that it would do for me. When I tell people it's been running for 18 years, they don't seem to really believe that it's been 18 years, but it has been. I started the show on the 16th of August 2004. I started filming it. The very first episode I shot was with Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta. I never thought for him that this show would be anything at all. I thought it was me chatting with some of my industry friends, we'll do a season maybe another and it'll fizzle out like most options have because talk shows have not really been huge. I mean, remember there was, of course, Tabassum who did Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan; there was Simi Grewal who did Rendevouz which was so iconic. I just thought this would be fun and games for me. But then I realized that it's become a big part of who I am as a person and as a brand. It just added so much to my entire personality that it suddenly took over."

He further continues, "Sometimes to my detriment because I'm a filmmaker, but I find people asking me more about Koffee With Karan than about my movies, which I take as a compliment at that moment. But when I reflect I'm like 'I'm a filmmaker at heart first that's my primary passion but people are only asking me about Koffee With Karan'. So while one part of me is elated, one part of me also needs to kind of make sure that the filmmaker, kind of, graph needs to move forward too."

The new season of Koffee with Karan will see Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Akshay Kumar, Janhvi Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, Kriti Sanon, Tiger Shroff, Shahid Kapoor, Kiara Advani, Ananya Panday, Vijay Deverakonda, Anil Kapoor, Varun Dhawan as guests. Sidharth Malhotra, Vicky Kaushal, Gauri Khan, Aamir Khan, Maheep Kapoor and Bhavana Pandey are also expected to appear.

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