Misleading Claim: No, Kareena Kapoor Khan did not tell the Indian audience to not watch her movies

On August 13, 2021, Bollywood actress Kareen Kapoor Khan was interviewed by journalist Barkha Dutta as a part of her company Mojo’s #CoversationsForChange initiative.

The conversation was centered around nepotism in the Bollywood industry and how Khan’s career has been different from those who do not have parents who come from the industry.

A clip of the video went viral on Facebook where a user named Adesh Malik posted a 20 second clip of the interview where Khan exclaims that the indian audience should not watch her movies and since nobody is forcing them to watch movies why do they continue to do so. The caption along with this clip called for people to boycott her new releases since she does not care about the audience.

The clip has 3,45,000 views on Facebook and has been shared over 20,000 times since the video was posted on August 23, 2021.

Fact-check:

Upon finding a longer clip on Mojo Story’s Youtube page, we found that the video itself is actually 8 minutes and 10 seconds long. In the longer video Khan can be heard talking about the privilege of coming from an established Bollywood family and how her struggles have been different from someone who is starting afresh in the space.

She details how despite coming from an established family only nepotism could not have given her a career spanning 21 years. With regards to the statement that she made about the audiences, it seems that the line was taken out of context. She says the statement in response to the fact that there are some people who are critical of her privilege and still continue to watch her movies and they should not if they are so bothered by it. She then continues to emphasize that it is the audience that makes or breaks a movie star. Therefore, the clip posted on Facebook is taken out of context and is misleading.