Kangana Ranaut called out Karan Johar for nepotism and he's not happy

Kangana's fiery statements on Koffee with Karan a few weeks ago did not go down well with Karan Johar.

Although the director kept his cool during the course of the show, he recently found an opportunity to toss a few retorts at the queen.

In an interview with Anupama Chopra at the London School of Economics, Karan explained how he was wrongly accused by Kangana Ranaut of being the 'flag bearer of nepotism' in Bollywood.

"She was my guest [on Koffee with Karan, which Karan hosts] and I had to hear what she said. She has the right to have an opinion but when she says ‘flag bearer of nepotism’, what I want to say is, I don’t think she has understood the entirety of that statement because what is nepotism?" said Karan.

"Am I working with my son, daughter or nephew?" questioned the filmmaker. "What about those 15 filmmakers who are not from the film industry? No one will talk about Tarun Mansukhani, Shakun Batra, Shashank Khaitan or a Punit Malhotra, who is a costume designer’s nephew, who came from no film background.

"You give these people a film career and I think that is the reverse of nepotism but that of course one would not get credit for. As far as actors are concerned, I have launched just two of them i.e. Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan. Sidharth Malhotra was just 1/3rd of them and had nothing to do with the movies. So I really didn’t get what she meant (sic)."

Pointing out other claims Kangana made on the show, he continued: "What does she mean by 'movie mafia'? What does she think we are doing? Sitting here and not giving her work? Is that what makes us mafia?

"We do that by our choice. I do that because maybe I am not interested to work with Kangana and that does not make me movie mafia, it makes me a man with an opinion. I appreciate that she had a great perspective and everyone lauded her for coming on my show. People said ‘she gave it off to Karan’ and I would say of course, but I was gracious enough to keep everything. I cut none of it and I do edit so much of stuff from the show. I was like let the world see her opinion. I gave her the platform to speak and now this is my platform so here I am speaking what I want to.

"I want to conclude by saying I am done with Kangana playing the woman card and the victim card. You can’t be a victim at every point of time who has a sad story to say as to how you have been terrorised by the bad world of industry. If that’s the case, leave it," he added.

Here's a snippet of the interview: