Karan Johar Recalls Being Isolated As A Child: 'I Was Not A Boy Enough'

News18

2 days ago

Karan Johar also mentioned that during his teens, he tried hard to be a part of the group with other children. However, he was never considered "a boy enough".
Karan Johar has opened up about feeling isolated when he was a child. Recently, the filmmaker was speaking to Jay Shetty on his YouTube channel when he recalled how he struggled to gain acceptance among other kids from his age group.
'I was told I was, you know, more feminine than I should be. I walked differently. I ran differently. I spoke differently. My choices in life, my hobbies in life, were different," Karan said.
'So whenever I went down, you know we lived in like apartment blocks, and when you went down, it was the thing that all the kids in the apartment block would come down and play in the evenings, and I wanted to belong," the filmmaker continued.
'I wanted to be part of the football team. I wanted to play cricket with the boys. But nobody chose me because I wasn't good enough. You know, I wasn't sporty enough. I was not boy enough or man enough. So when you ask me what I wanted to be, the first thing at that age was that I wanted to belong," the 'Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani' director went on," KJo added.
Karan further mentioned that during his teens, he tried hard to be a part of the group with other children. However, he was never considered 'a boy enough".
'The very first part of my formative years, my teenage years, was just to belong. And no one told me then that you don't have to. You can be your own person. That guidance, that nurturing, that philosophy of life wasn't given to me at that point in time. And I remember the particular moment when my mother sat me down, and I was 12, because I was going through a really rough time. I wanted to change schools. I wanted to because I felt I was being ragged in and around. And I still went back to the same school. I didn't change schools," he said.
Meanwhile, on the work front, Karan Johar's Dhadak 2 starring Siddhant Chaturvedi and Triptii Dimri will hit theatres on August 1, 2025.
First Published:
July 26, 2025, 14:36 IST
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