Navya Naveli Nanda: ‘What The Hell Navya represents who we are as a family in real life’

Navya Naveli Nanda is currently busy with her podcast What The Hell Navya and she keeps sharing snippets and interviews with her mother Shweta Bachchan Nanda and grandmother Jaya Bachchan where the conversations are candid and fun. Her videos keep going viral on social media and it’s clear fans and users enjoy watching the unfiltered conversations. And an equally unfiltered conversation happened with Firstpost, and here are her responses:

When asked what the story behind the name of the podcast is, Navya revealed, “When we were recording for season one, this was the phrase that would keep coming up in every episode. This would be the expression used by my mother or grandmother as a reaction to something that I would say so we decided to have fun and keep the name What The Hell Navya. I felt it was a quirky and fun name to have for the show.”

On the challenges of interviewing one’s own family

It was more joyful than challenging. I think it’s fun to have an interview with your family. These are the conversations we also have at our homes so it was kind of easy to have it here as well while recording and it was definitely fun.”

Talking about the prep for the podcast, Navya said, “When we kind of decided to do the podcast, I think the the topics for each episode really came out of, you know, conversations that we have at home and also just genuine curiosity that I had around certain things and, you know, certain discussions that I wanted to have with my mom and my nannies. So, this season as well we try to do the same thing. We try to kind of pick out themes that are also very relevant in today’s context, things that young people are talking about, you know, whether it’s mental health or financial independence or masculinity. So I think we also try to keep it relevant to what is happening in today’s day and age.”

The show is a mix of humor self deprecation vulnerability. Was it completely your decision to decide the tone of the podcast? To this, Navya said, “We didn’t think too much about it. We tried to keep it as natural and as unfiltered as possible. We wanted to be our honest selves on certain things- the vulnerability and the humor of it, the disagreements. All of this came together pretty much naturally. It’s very very representative of who we are as people. We have been vulnerable and we have shared our experience with people and that’s what makes the show fun to watch it. You know what you’re listening to is really honest.”

Jaya Bachchan said today’s generation has been in relationships and not love. And a lot of people agreed to that the comment went viral on social media. How much do you agree or relate to it?

That was really popular because it was a really different point of view the three of us had. People have heard the podcast. I spoke about how in today’s generation, it’s also about self-love as well. We are spending more time in loving and appreciating ourselves as well and taking care of ourselves before taking care of others. That’s something I shared which was my thought process.