Days before hosting his new quiz show, the actor opened up to a contestant about the professional cost of fatherhood and why he calls his daughters a double bonus.
Anil Kapoor has a story he's told before in bits and pieces, but this time it came out in full, on the set of his new show, to a contestant half his age.
According to Bollywood Hungama, the actor was in conversation with a participant on India Ke Top 1%: The Anil Kapoor Show when the young man mentioned he'd stepped back from work because his family needed him more. That set Kapoor off on a memory he says he's never quite made peace with.
He was shooting through the night, he said, when Rhea was born. He fell asleep on set. By the time he woke up and reached the hospital, his daughter had already arrived. "Main aaj tak khud ko forgive nahi kar saka," he said, according to the outlet, admitting he'd missed the moment entirely.
It's the kind of confession that sits oddly next to the image of Anil Kapoor the industry usually sells, the guy who's 69 and still sprinting through airports on Instagram. But he used it to make a point about his sons-in-law, saying they manage to carve out real time for family alongside their careers, something he says he's only learning to do now.
And then came the line that's doing the rounds: having a daughter is a bonus, he said, and with two, Sonam and Rhea, he considers himself doubly lucky.
The timing isn't incidental. India Ke Top 1% premieres September 19 at 8 PM on Star Plus and JioHotstar, with Kapoor stepping into a hosting chair for the first time in this format. It's a quiz show built around logic and observation rather than trivia recall, and JioHotstar is running a Play Along feature that lets viewers at home compete alongside the studio contestants for smart TVs and phones.
Whether the show's format lands is a separate question from whether Kapoor's story does. Personal anecdotes tend to travel further than format explainers, and this one has the texture of something an actor doesn't usually admit on camera, a regret rather than a highlight reel moment.
What happens next is simple enough. The show goes live Friday night, and viewers will get to judge both the host and the format for themselves. Sonam and Rhea haven't publicly responded to their father's comments yet.
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