Comedian, social media influencer and actress Kusha Kapila has finally reacted to Samay Raina taking potshots on her divorce with Zorawar Singh Ahluwalia and her sex life on the Pretty Good Roast Show. There were several comments of Raina, which needed to be censored. While Kapila took everything sportingly, her fans expressed their views and said they were not happy with Samay’s jokes.
Now, the _Thank You For Coming_ actress reacted to the incident by sharing a note to her YouTube community. “Friends, a recent roast I was a part of has led a lot of my female and queer followers to question why did I sit through something that could have been completely avoided and WITH GOOD REASON. Here’s my two cents: It was done in good faith and for a friend. Nobody has been paid (neither comics nor guests) for it so the argument that people are ‘being paid big fat cheques to hear their insults’ is baseless,” she wrote.
“Jokes weren’t shared beforehand (as it’s done in all roast formats in the West) so I had no idea what was in store for me. Maybe I should have asked for a script and known better but since friends were involved I didn’t. Rookie mistake. While I endured some of the really raspy jokes in front of a live audience and technicians, I absolutely was not okay for it to play for millions of people since some jokes straight-up dehumanised me. It was shockingly unkind,” Kusha added.
She continued, “Mine was the first episode to be shot (was shot in January) so everyone had a fair bit of learnings post shoot which is why in other episodes, boundaries haven’t been crossed, especially with women. Last six months since the episode was shot, I have been a part of various calls and negotiations for every word, every joke, every slur (literal begging has happened). If I hadn’t let the episode go live, I would have been called a coward and a crybaby and a different kind of trolling would have ensued.”
The Sukhee actress also wrote, “This has been a huge learning for me too since over the course of last six months during negotiations, I have been told that I deserve these jokes and that as a divorced woman, I should have seen this coming. Maybe I should have and maybe silence on this topic is seen as cowardice but it’s mostly choosing peace over endless discourse that will likely villainise women. Simultaneously, when you don’t speak, people also choose to believe whatever they want to. So this is me clearing the air as much as I can and advising women artists to have strict riders in place.”