Some conversations don’t leave you impressed. They leave you nourished.

This episode of 'The Pooja Bhatt Show' feels like coming home — to a warm meal, familiar aromas, and stories that sit gently with you long after they’re told. Pooja sits down with Chef Vicky Ratnani — chef, author, television personality — not to dazzle, but to listen, remember, and reflect.

The journey begins in a Sindhi home in Shivaji Park, with the comforting tang of Sindhi Kadhi — food as memory, as belonging. From there, it travels quietly to the decks of the Queen Elizabeth 2, where Vicky once cooked for Nelson Mandela — a moment held not as spectacle, but as gratitude.

They talk about the unseen heart of food: service as care, kitchens as communities, and why simplicity often carries the deepest flavour. Vicky speaks with honesty about choosing sobriety, about clarity and discipline, and how that inner alignment reshaped his work and life. There is space too for the harder truths — the toll the hospitality world takes on bodies, relationships, and time.

The conversation widens to the evolution of Indian cuisine on the global stage, the responsibility that comes with representation, and the quiet worry of traditions slipping away under the weight of trends. And, as all meaningful conversations do, it circles back home — to nostalgia, to memory, to the food that shapes who we are.

Like the best meals, this conversation doesn’t try to impress — it simply stays with you.

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In this intimate conversation, Pooja Bhatt sits down with producer Marijke Desouza to explore a career shaped as much by mentorship as by quiet perseverance. What emerges is the portrait of a filmmaker who learned her craft from the ground up—by observing, absorbing, and carrying forward knowledge passed down through experience rather than formal instruction.

Marijke reflects on her journey from prop shopping as a production design assistant and being production manager on films with tight budgets to producing large-scale films like Brahmastra, offering insight into how guidance, trust, and responsibility move organically across film sets. The conversation sheds light on the industry’s most unseen labour: the delicate balance between creative ambition and financial reality, the changing scale of crews, and why production—often mistaken for mere logistics—is, in fact, central to bringing stories to life.

Alongside these professional reflections are moments of personal vulnerability—navigating grief, learning from loss, and understanding when to lead, when to lean on others, and when to step back. It becomes a conversation about staying aligned with one’s inner compass while quietly supporting those around you—reminding us that mentorship is rarely announced; it is practiced.
The episode is less about spectacle and more about substance—a thoughtful reflection on growth, resilience, and the quiet grace of those who hold the framework steady, allowing others the freedom to dream.

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In this intimate conversation, Pooja Bhatt sits down with Kunal Kapoor to trace the living legacy of Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre—not as an institution, but as a home shaped by memory, ritual, and artistic discipline. What emerges is a portrait of a family for whom theatre was never merely performance, but a way of life.

Kapoor reflects on deeply personal traditions—from legendary Christmas lunches to memories of a Goa that existed before it became a destination—and on the quiet resilience behind Prithvi’s enduring ethos: the show must go on. That belief was tested most profoundly after the loss of his mother, Jennifer Kendal, yet it remains the moral spine of the theatre she helped build.

The conversation moves fluidly across questions that matter today: the fragility of true patronage in a culture increasingly governed by commerce, the challenge of funding theatre without hollowing its soul, and the responsibility of preserving memory in an age that forgets too easily. Anecdotes like the now-mythic “Chamcha Room” sit alongside reflections on books, paintings, and archival labour—acts of care that reveal Kapoor as both custodian and chronicler.

This episode is less an interview than a meditation—on legacy without nostalgia, on art sustained by discipline rather than spectacle, and on the quiet truth that legacy is not preserved here; it is practiced.

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In this episode, Pooja sits down with actor and voice artist Mohan Kapur, a performer who has mastered his craft by simply living life.

The episode sees the two friends trace Mohan’s journey: from being paid ₹500 an episode on Saanp Seedi - money he jokingly refers to as for “cigarettes and booze” - to finding himself inside the Marvel universe. He laughs about being “a man everyone loved to hate,” recalls the time a co-actor on the sets of Angaaray got so carried away that he hurled real rocks at Mohan and Pooja ended up getting punched, and the time Samuel L Jackson complained to him about being scratched by a cat named Thor.

The conversation moves fluidly between humour and heartbreak. Mohan opens up about losing both parents, caring for his mother through her final months, and refusing to enter his home after the death of his beloved cat, Ladoo Singh.

Mohan also reflects on the question of nepotism in the industry, and of film casting being dictated by social media following.

This is an intimate, funny, often disarming exchange between two friends who have unknowingly shaped each other’s lives.

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In this episode, Pooja meets Abbas Ali Moghul, the award-winning action director behind more than 300 films and shows, and the son of actor Habib, who fled Iran at seventeen to chase his dream of working in Hindi cinema.

Habib went on to appear in more than 150 films, yet passed away with little recognition. Abbas carries that legacy forward with quiet pride, and has become one of India’s most respected action directors, known for crafting iconic sequences in films like Ghulam, Josh and Agneepath.

In this conversation, Abbas reflects on performing death-defying stunts long before VFX and modern safety gear. He shares what it means to stand in for stars when things turn dangerous: jumping off an eleven-storey building without ropes, crashing through glass walls, even setting himself ablaze.

Abbas takes Pooja behind the scenes of some of Bollywood’s most unforgettable moments: Aamir Khan’s legendary train stunt in Ghulam, Akshay Kumar’s daring leap onto an aircraft’s wings, and the thoughtful lesson Hrithik Roshan once offered his son, Arbaaz.

The discussion traces Abbas’s extraordinary arc—from acting in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi to witnessing his father’s struggles and isolation within the industry.

This episode shines a light on the grit behind the glamour: the underpaid stunt performers who risk everything, the moments Abbas worked while wheelchair-bound, and the sleepless nights that still precede every dangerous shoot, even after forty years in the business. It’s a heartfelt reminder of the invisible backbone of cinema, and the passion that keeps it alive.

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In this moving conversation, Pooja meets Amruta Subhash, a National Award-winning actor and theatre director. This conversation is one between soulmates: it starts with tears, ends with tears and wanders through many worlds that have shaped Amruta’s life.

Amruta speaks with candour and vulnerability: about directing and acting in her brilliant play, Asen Me Nasen Me — a gift from her husband and playwright Sandesh Kulkarni, based on her father’s descent into Alzheimer’s — and about grappling with her grandmother’s death and the guilt and desperation that followed.

Amruta recounts the time theatre legend Satyadev Dubey threatened to slap her, even as Pooja likens her to a dragon unleashed when the camera rolls.

Beyond this, the conversation is also a meditation in resilience and healing. Amruta talks about her transformation--being confined to a wheelchair at 23 to rebuilding her life piece by piece; about finding an unexpected father figure in playwright Vijay Tendulkar, who quietly nudged her toward therapy and healing. The two look back at Amruta’s acting journey, and how she grew up seeing her mother Jyoti Subhash transform from a bhakri-cooking homemaker to a force on stage — a metamorphosis that left her spellbound.

Along the way, Amruta laughs about receiving a postcard from Aamir Khan that convinced her, as a young girl, she was meant to marry him; and how her first words weren’t speech at all, but song.

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Pooja sits down with the ever-unassuming yet endlessly fascinating Avtar Gill—a man who insists he’s “ordinary” despite a career spanning 350 films.

In this episode, filled with sardonic humour and candid reflections, Avtar looks back at the quiet strength of his truck driver father, jokes about being labelled Mahesh Bhatt’s third wife, and reflects on the lessons he has absorbed from greats like Dilip Kumar, Pran and Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

Along the way, he regales Pooja with stories—of the time Rishi Kapoor pranked him at midnight by pretending to be Steven Spielberg, why Sanjay Dutt pushed for a Sadak remake, when he wrote his own dialogues in Rangeela and the time he witnessed Mithun Chakraborty eat rice and salt water in a hotel suite in Malaysia.

Avtar also reveals how he has managed to look the same for decades, why he calls himself an also-ran, why he has no ego in asking for work and how, despite nearly five decades of work in the industry, he remains a labourer at heart.

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In this episode, Pooja sits down with Rahul Bose - actor, director, writer, activist, sportsman, sports administrator and dear friend.

In a conversation marked by candid admissions, warm banter and thoughtful reflections, the two revisit the Bombay they grew up in and what it means to embrace singledom. Rahul speaks openly about the arc of his life: the early hunger for money, success and fame, and the slow shift toward quieter pursuit of service and cutting out negativity. He recalls the night Anurag Kashyap phoned him at 2 AM to praise his directorial debut, Everybody Says I Am Fine; his overwhelming encounter with the generosity of Zakir Hussain; and why he believes the lines between arthouse and mainstream cinema have largely dissolved. Along the way, the two remember a series of moments from their shared past—Rahul scribbling poetry for Pooja on a tissue in the middle of the 'Ghetto' and breaking a traffic signal for a shot.

Rahul also reflects on why marriage holds no particular fascination for him and why he’s content being an eternal bachelor. He talks about the time he kissed Pooja on screen, the bewilderment he felt when he saw his friends’ mothers cooking instead of their fathers, and the deep sense of gratitude that anchors him today.

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