“Laugh at us, laugh with us, have a good time,” declares Maheep Kapoor, one of the leads of the new Netflix reality show, The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives. The eight-episode series tracks the lives of four close friends — Kapoor, Neelam Kothari Soni, Bhavana Pandey, and Seema Khan — who are firmly entrenched in the Hindi movie industry. In the two weeks since it aired, it trended number one on the digital platform in India, despite reviewers panning it.
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The protagonists, to their credit, were prepared for the inevitable trolling. Kothari Soni, a popular actor in the 1980s and 1990s and now a jewellery designer says, “They are making fun of it, yet they are watching the whole thing.” Indeed, ‘cringe but binge,’ seems to be the verdict from audiences.
Filled with scenes of dining out and dressing up, the show is a main course of gloss and glamour, with a tiny serving of drama on the side. Produced by Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Entertainment, it includes appearances by Gauri and Shah Rukh Khan, plus an assortment of B-town (Malaika Arora, Ekta Kapoor), as well as society (Natasha Poonawalla, Surily Goel, Monisha Jaising make an appearance at the party finale). Following in the footsteps of mega-hit US reality shows such as The Real Housewives and Keeping up with the Kardashians, it has no intellectual pretensions. Instead, it aims to show us how the other half lives.
Bhavana Pandey, Neelam Kothari Soni, Maheep Kapoor and Seema Khan | Photo Credit: Rachel Santos/Netflix
Who is acting?
Shopping in a Rolls Royce on an overseas trip? But of course. Yet aside from these obvious displays of largesse, these women’s lives are not without struggle. Early on, Khan alludes to a less than perfect marriage, Pandey’s husband, Chunky, rues his lack of ever winning an acting award, and Kapoor talks of being the less successful family among her famous in-laws (her brothers-in-law include Anil and Boney Kapoor). The show touches upon female ambition — Khan, Kapoor and Pandey have a business they want to grow, Kothari Soni explores a potential return to acting. Whether these issues seem pedestrian to the general public is besides the point. The show offers an escape.
How accurate a portrayal is it? Kapoor is known for her use of colourful language (“I make no apologies,” she says). The flare up between Khan and Pandey is authentic. Those accents that annoyed viewers? They are not fake. Kothari Soni explains how she was born and raised in Hong Kong, studied at American and British schools and finds it odd that people think she is faking it. Ditto Kapoor, who was raised in London and lived all over the world. Moreover, the foursome find it funny when people compliment them on their acting skills. “We are not acting, this is us in real life, and our conversations with each other and our families,” says Kothari Soni. If it were acting, Khan quips, “Give me an Oscar!”
From left: Maheep Kapoor, Neelam Kothari Soni, Bhavana Pandey and Seema Khan | Photo Credit: Rachel Santos/Netflix
Risks worth taking
Filmed prior to the pandemic, it was Johar, an old friend, and his team, who encouraged them to do a pilot. Khan was the first to get onboard. The others had apprehensions. Pandey says, “You’re putting yourself out there for people to judge you.” Kothari Soni admits that while she was very excited initially, she got cold feet. “I’ve been such a private person. I did films 20 years ago. To have people in my home — I was nervous.” It was her husband, Sameer Soni, who persuaded her. She remembers him saying, “‘I think you’re giving yourself too much importance; you don’t get a better gig than this, just blindly do it.’”
- Your greatest extravagance?
- Maheep: I haven’t travelled this whole year and I am very upset about it. But yes, travelling with my children and my husband, exploring new places, adventures — I like to spend on [making] those memories; Seema: Back in my 20s and 30s, it was about the clothes, shoes and bags. Now, it is about travelling. I love to see new places, eat at new restaurants.
- Your favourite occupation?
- Neelam: Right now, my best occupation is reading the comments on the show; Bhavana: Either am watching Netflix or am on the phone reading comments.
- If you could change one thing about yourself?
- Neelam: To stop giving a damn about what people are going to think and say; Seema: I need to learn how to zip it. Sometimes I give out unnecessary information; Bhavana: What I have improved a lot, but could do a little more of, is to be less sensitive
- Your greatest regret?
- Maheep: My mistakes, my good times, my bad times — I don’t regret anything; Seema: My life has been quite colourful and adventurous, so I am at peace; Bhavana: Now that I am 46, when I look back, everything has been a learning and an experience.
Kapoor says she wanted to make her own adventure, and what better way to do it than with her best friends? Plus, her son counselled her to not say no to platforms like Netflix and Dharmatic. “It is a very brave thing that we’ve done,” she says. “We’ve opened our homes, our lives, we’ve exposed our children to the show and up for judgement. It is not easy.”
The idea of self as a brand — long the domain of politicians — gained currency with the explosion of reality TV and social media in the 21st century. The biggest beneficiary of that credo is, of course, Donald Trump, who parlayed his TV avatar into the ultimate top job in the US. At its best, reality TV can help change our thinking on issues. Kim Kardashian West started off as an object of ridicule, yet now uses her celebrity to get the wrongfully convicted out of prison. And she rakes in millions. “Reality TV can be a launch pad for careers beyond the show,” says Karla Bookman, founder of independent media company, The Swaddle. She cites the example of The Real Housewives franchise in the US. “The most popular and business savvy stars parlayed their roles into fashion lines, restaurants and even a $100 million liquor brand.”
But such brand building comes with a cautionary note. Prathap Suthan, CCO of Delhi-based Bang in the Middle, says, “Be it bouquets or brickbats, thinking ‘all news is good news’ is short sighted. Reality TV may show someone the road back into the limelight, but to build their brand, they need to have other factors going for them, such as intrinsic charisma, calibre, staying power. They need to be like phosphorous and burn bright. Otherwise it is an ephemeral brand world that they are building.”
In a year when Bollywood faced tremendous backlash against a culture of entitlement, were the women nervous about how the show would come across? Pandey acknowledges that the world is very different from when they first started filming in 2019. She says the series was not to demonstrate that they didn’t care. “It was made for an entirely different reason, to be light-hearted and fun,” she explains. Kothari Soni adds, “People were starved for this kind of content. The timing is perfect. They are making fun of it, yet they are watching. That says it all.” Kapoor agrees. “It has become fashionable to troll and abuse,” she says. “Everyone cannot love us. But they have watched the show. Love us, hate us, they’ve watched us, they’ve not ignored us.” Khan concludes that the idea was to sit back and forget about one’s troubles. “What feels better than a good laugh? I really don’t know.”