Last year, filmmaker Sajid Khan grabbed headlines when he had a war of words with filmmaker Ashutosh Govariker at the Star Screen Awards. This year, however, he didn’t get a chance to pull any such antic, since he was replaced by actors Shah Rukh Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Madhavan and Omi (of
3 Idiots
fame) as hosts of the awards function.
Sajid now seems to be nursing a bruised ego. “The organisers wanted a big star to open and close the show. They wanted me to host a segment in between, but I wanted to open and close the show, which is exactly what they did not want. They wanted a big actor to compete with a big awards function that will soon follow this one. I was not comfortable with that because I can’t just come and start hosting a section for half an hour in between,” he says.
Monika Shergill, creative senior director,
Star India
explains, “We have had Sajid for three years. We just wanted a new flavour in the show this time.”