What Happened With Kunal Kamra Was Unjustified: Ashish Shakya

Ashish Shakya’s first special is out on Amazon Prime Video.

Ashish Shakya is on our latest episode.

(Photo: The Quint)

After doing stand up comedy for years, Ashish Shakya is making his foray into stand up specials with Amazon Prime’s Life is Good. In his own words, the special will appeal to those who’ve just entered their 30’s. “I’m 34 now, and this is a mix of all my experiences and take my take on everything from romance to Bollywood.”

On the latest episode of ‘OffScreen’, we spoke to Ashish about writing stand up comedy, his career trajectory post the AIB fiasco and what happened with Kunal Kamra.

We quizzed him on whether he has lines that he wouldn’t cross in comedy. He said, “See personally it’s very easy for me to write any kind of joke, but then I would do it only if it felt right to me. Like taking potshots at a minority would be the easiest thing but it just wouldn’t work for me.”

On his writing process, he said, “You need to be severely disciplined in this business. With stand up there is this perception that people just go on to stage and create jokes and it becomes funny. It’s not like that at all.”

In ‘OffScreen’, we recount stories from the world of movies and web series, mostly featuring people who toil behind the scenes, people who basically work off-screen to create magic on screen. We also bring to you fascinating stories of actors that you might not have been privy to.

Producer: Nandakumar Rammohan
Video Editor: Ashish MacCune