High drama at a Balaji Audition. Now that’s the stuff reality shows are made of! So you may have seen a spattering of “breaking news” about Ekta Kapoor’s new reality show because at the recently held auditions some 200 boys and girls were asked to passionately kiss random members of the opposite sex. Now as much as we’re trying to be, this isn’t the land of the Bold & the Beautiful just yet (thank God) so you can just about imagine the chagrin this whole episode must have caused. Many hopefuls ran helter-skelter refusing to participate and a brave few decided to bite the bullet and kiss the frog. Funnily enough out of the 83 couples shortlisted, Adam and Nisha Bedi made the grapevine the next day with a big fat puckered-up picture (come on they’re married!) which had of course been conveniently leaked to the press. In fact during the audition he fake-kissed another contestant too, I’m surprised they didn’t publish that picture!

(Relax, this is from Adam and Nisha’s White Wedding at Montego Bay, Morjim in Goa)
Nisha Bedi was a little taken aback by the sudden flurry of press calling to quiz her about an audition she was not aware was being made public. She said, “Its not really right to make other people’s auditions public without their permission, in fact they called us to audition in the first place!”

She’s a clever one that Ekta. I remember running into her outside of a once-hopping club called Squeeze (Bandra, Mumbai) in a white racer back, jeans and the trademark red tilak on her forehead. Despite having danced up a storm her eyes remained ablaze with something not quite evil but getting there. (Oh well, there goes my television career.)

The incident has been confirmed by the project head, Vikas Gupta, but he’s not ready to divulge any details, just like his precious master, Ekta. I hear though that the show is Ekta’s pet project and she is watching every actor’s performance, hawk-like. When quizzed by a daily about this latest development, Ekta herself said, “Right now, all I will say is that I am creating a new medium and this is not anything cheap but something very classy waiting to happen.”

Ah yes, Ekta Kapoor, a class act.

2nd Generation Celeberity Who’s Who?

• Ekta Kapoor is legendary Bollywood actor Jeetendra & Shobha Kapoor’s daughter and (somewhat uncoordinated) struggling-actorTusshar Kapoor’s sister. She is the weepy Indian soap opera industry’s mastermind and runs Balaji Tele-films that produces all those glycerine-heavy shows aka the “K-series.”
• Adam Bedi (married to long-time sweetheart Nisha Harale) is actor Kabir Bedi & British-born fashion designer Susan Humphreys’ son and step brother to actress/TV hostess Pooja Bedi.