Face off

Age?Thirty-six. Which is not unbelievable, though he does have a very youthful manner, much like a college kid. And Shekhar Suman says h...

Age?

Thirty-six. Which is not unbelievable, though he does have a very youthful manner, much like a college kid. And Shekhar Suman says he has always been full of beans. "When I was a kid in Patna, we were a joint family and there was this huge bunch of cousins. And even though I was the same age, I used be the Supremo and we could only start the day’s play after they all had said Hail Supremo and I’d inspected their nails etc."

So, are the rumours of altercations with his Movers & Shakers team because the little bully has grown to become a big one?

This is the first time he has heard such scuttlebutt, says Shekhar. "I work with a wonderful set of people. Of course there are the normal during-the-course-of-the working-day arguments but anything besides that is news to me. I am a success because of the talent of the people behind me." Well, that is a very proper and decent thing to say.

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But gossip still rules that behind the laugh track, there are subdued battle cries of conflict betweenhim, and his directors and writers.

That is another bit of fresh news for Shekhar. "If there were such problems would the show have climbed from one day a week to six? And I hardly ever see my writers, in fact they are more like ghost writers to me. I just get the script at home everyday and see their names on top of it."

Has he never been curious to meet the people who provide him the soundbytes which have made his show a success?

"I am not curious about them, I am curious about what they write. In fact, there is hardly anybody ever on the sets, even the director is in the control room. This show is basically about me and how I present it, so there is not much interaction on a day to day basis except with the band."

Ah yes, the band, which among most other things on the sets, is a direct lift off from The Jay Leno Show. How does it feel to do a show which is such a blatant copy?

"I would not call it that," he says. No, we didn’t think he would but Shekhar does argues his case pretty well."If I start a news bulletin, it is like saying that I am copying another news bulletin. And if you talk about the sets, well thousands of movies and serials are shot on the same sets. And besides, I have no control over these things, the channel does. But the similarity ends after the sets."

So Jay Leno has been no source of inspiration for him on how to do a show like this?

No. He says that all shows including Connan O’Brien, Johnny Carson and the Leno ones follow the same format of the starting session followed by two interviews. The selling point is the host and thus what actually matters here is Shekhar and not peripheral things like sets. "When the comparisons started I got very pissed because I was trying doing the show my way. You cannot compare Shekhar Suman with Jay Leno because he is Jay Leno and I am me. It is like comparing a merc and a limo they are two cars but you cannot compare them."

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Okay. But how does he think hosting a show compares with acting?

"I think M&S is all ofwhat that I have learnt in films, television and life. It is much more challenging than just understanding a script and portraying a character. M&S is more about me as a person than me as an actor.

So, is he saying that he likes it more than acting?

"Oh, no. Acting is very much my mainstay creatively."

Then M&S must be his economic backbone — a very, very well padded one at that too, because it has been heard that he has signed a rupees nine crore contract with Sony!

Ahem, number talk is a no-no. He has heard too many guesstimates about what he earns and all he will say is that he hasn’t signed over any dotted line recently. "There was an offer for an exclusive contract with Sony but I haven’t signed it yet because it would limit my creative outlets. But I was very honoured by it."

n How does so much success sit on his shoulders?

Apparently, very heavily. "It is as if you are not a free actor any more. Every time you act you think about your past track record, your future, theJustice in Kanpur, the school teacher in Nagpur who came up to you. Once I did not appear for three episodes in Reporter and the Dean of Wellingdon Hospital in Delhi wrote saying I had no business not doing those episodes because I had a moral responsibility to do so. It gets scary because you realise that it much more than just TV for people."

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He started on the path to this success pretty young with Utsav. Why did he just peter out in the middle?

He says he had hardly unpacked his suitcase after coming to Bombay when Shashi Kapoor offered him Utsav. "At 22, I was doing an international film where I was cast opposite Rekha. I didn’t know what to think then. I got some wrong advice and picked up B-grade films. At one stage I did get a little disillusioned wondering why I wasn’t getting the work I wanted since I started off so well. But I think I was destined for television. After a three year lull from 1990-93, I got Reporter and Dekh Bhai Dekh and that was it."

So, what is this "shaker and notshirker" most likely to say?

Well, we thought it might be My show is NOT a copy of Jay Leno’. But, it isn’t. "Don’t take me too seriously," is his answer.

And what is he least likely to say?

"F*** off."