Karan Johar has spoken openly about how the culture surrounding celebrity interviews has changed since he launched Koffee With Karan, admitting that the show has lost some of its edge because guests are now far more conscious of what they say on camera, and that he understands why.

In the early seasons of the show, Karan Johar said, the set was essentially empty beyond the cameras and the celebs. There were no handlers, no teams monitoring every word, no one waiting in the wings to manage the fallout of a loose remark. That is no longer the case.

“When I started Koffee With Karan, and I used to look beyond the stage, there used to be nobody there. It was just an empty set,” Karan Johar said in conversation with Variety India. “Now when I look, there are publicists, managers, image-management people, teams.…