When Karan Johar told SOTY crew to treat film cast as ‘megastars’

• Karan Johar has introduced several new faces to Bollywood.
• Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, and Sidharth Malhotra are among them.
• Karan shared how he ensured the debutants exuded confidence.

Filmmaker Karan Johar has introduced several new faces to Bollywood, but his most notable discoveries remain the Student of the Year trio—Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, and Sidharth Malhotra. Recently, on Komal Nahta’s podcast Game Changers, Karan shared how he ensured the debutants exuded confidence on set.

Karan recalled his first interactions with the three and revealed that he never treated them as newcomers. “I won’t lie. For me, it was just that I told my team—Sidharth and Varun, these two were my assistants, and I met Alia for the first time when she came from school. And when I launched them, I told everyone on the set, the choreographer, the production, the designer, to treat these three like megastars,” he said.

When the crew questioned his reasoning, Karan explained, “They asked what it meant. I said, ‘If you give them that confidence, they will face the camera like stars. If you treat them like newcomers, they will give you the performance of newcomers.’ And they performed like stars.”

Student of the Year (2012) was a box-office hit, earning over ₹100 crore. The film catapulted Alia, Varun, and Sidharth to stardom. A sequel featuring Tiger Shroff, Ananya Panday, and Tara Sutaria followed in 2019.

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