Acting and producing complement each other: JD

Jamnadas Majethia aka JD, who has both acted as well as produced the sequel of cult comedy show Khichdi, enjoys donning two hats at a time.

“I am an actor first so it’s a great comeback to a show that has tickled the funny bones of TV audience for long and is still loved by viewers. Since, I am producing it also so it’s an added responsibility but gives me a lot of creative satisfaction,” says JD during his visit to Lucknow.

“In this show, both hats are like pant and shirt and they complement each other. I enjoy multi-tasking. I love the making part of the show as well as enacting strong character (Himanshu) that I play. Another beauty is that since it’s a comic character so it reduces the stress of a producer and recharges me,” he says and adds that Himanshu is his all-time favourite character.

JD feels that a lot has changed ever since the launch of the show in 2002.

“Then TV sets were less and so were viewers. Today, the number and medium has grown. So, we are using technology as medium to spread our reach but in that we have not diverted from the core — content and family viewing,” he says.

Speaking about the preparations with co-producer and director-writer Aatish Kapadia he says, “We started the pilot in February last year and took 14 month to come on air. We worked a lot on script, sets, old and new characters. Since, last we made Khichdi into a movie so we have worked on similar lines and made it like a cinema. Today, TV has become very big like cinema so we treated it like this.”

JD feels his competition is not with any comedy show but with Indian Premier League.

“Cricket is our competition yet we took the challenge and hope to bring the entire family together for our weekend show. We have full faith in the show and have brought it after proper survey. I am sure audience will love the comedy, craziness and madness the show will provide,” he says. The show will air on Star Plus from middle of this month.

To keep it high on content they have made it a finite 20episode one-hour show.

“Sequel is a very risky thing to do. Therefore, we have kept it finite to control the quality. It’s no point stretching something so long that people start getting bored,” he says.

In the show, Aatish’s son Agastya Kapadia and JD’s daughter Misri Majethia and are making debut as Jackky and Chakki.

This time audience will see them in outdoor locations too and will have celebrities playing characters in the show.

They are focusing on the show and have no plans to come up again with a movie on the show.

“Khichdi: The Movie had the record of having reruns on satellite. But, we don’t plan to make another one soon. Next movie will probably be something else but not so soon,” he adds.

HT Jamnadas Majethia