The recently held IIFA Awards in Malaysia, among other things, witnessed probably the best hosts in the history of any Bollywood award show. Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor came together to rock the IIFA stage and arguably bettered the Shah Rukh-Saif jodi as hosts is the general perception.
Ranveer and Arjun were invited by the organisers to host the show because the pairing had got so much love from the audience thanks to their incredible off screen camaraderie on first Koffee with Karan and then Comedy Nights with Kapil. And, of course, the hugely successful AIB Roast which broke the internet.
The boys prepared very hard for the evening, like no two stars have done for hosting an awards show. What’s more they went and took permissions before cracking jokes on other celebs. In fact when they started they first sweetly apologised to Aamir for the AIB Roast. when Arjun met Aamir at Yash Raj Studios, he ran the joke with him before including it in the IIFA script. So all the hullabaloo is really much ado about nothing!
Even Ranveer, who made a joke on Anurag Kashyap – and not on Ranbir Kapoor, as is being speculated – had also checked with Anurag at the Bombay Velvet screening if the director was okay with the joke before considering it. In fact, after the IIFA show Anurag met Ranveer back stage and gave him a huge hug. He and congratulated him on the show telling him how much he loved his hosting antics.
And what a show they put up, their indomitable energy bringing the house down every time they took stage. The dance, the humour, the camradiere… Bollywood has not seen something like this before. As the organisers best summed up: “People usually get up and go after two or three hours but here everyone was rooted to their seats for the full 6 hours thanks to the amazing hosts!”
