Arjun Kapoor‘s parents Boney Kapoor and Mona Shourie separated when he was just 10. Later, his father fell in love with Sridevi and got married to him. In a recent interview with Raj Shamani in his podcast, Arjun opened up on how he handled all this as a child.
(Also Read: Arjun Kapoor says he was judged on surname, personal life, choice of films: ‘People wanted me to fail’)
Arjun Kapoor says parents’ divorce was slightly traumatic
Arjun Kapoor recalled ‘traumatic’ time when his parents separated and said, “My parents split up when I was 10 years old. That’s something that, at that point, didn’t feel that would shape me and change the course of my entirely because I was dealing with it in real-time. But when I look back, there are a lot of things that…”
He further explained how he never had a normal father-son relationship even before his parents divorced and added, “For example, my father was busy making two big films when that was happening. He was making Prem and Roop Ki Rani Choro Ka Raja. He was under a lot of pressure to complete those films and release them. So, we never had a normal father-son relationship where he came to school to pick me up or drop me off. It’s not that he didn’t try, but I never had that, and then the slip happened also. That is slightly traumatic when you look back and retrospect.”
Arjun Kapoor added how his parents split affected his academics and said, “I was a naughty kid but I was very good with studies also, till I was in the fourth standard, I was very into it. And then the split happened. Now, when I look back, I couldn’t behave upset and spoilt and throw a s**t fit about it, the fact that I wanted this to not happen, but I think somewhere I lost interest in being good at education because I felt it was a rebellious feat. I chose to look away from that because I felt I didn’t need to do this. People were making their own choices I also wanted to do this. I used to enjoy school and then I started hating it because a lot of people wanted to know what was happening at that point. Thankfully, social media was not there. So it was still a bit of normal murmuring. But I had very good friends and family, I never had to face those issues, it wasn’t like I was isolated.”
Arjun Kapoor on dealing with father Boney Kapoor falling in love with Sridevi
Boney Kapoor fell in love with Sridevi while he was married to Mona Shourie. The filmmaker divorced his first wife in 1996 and got married to Sridevi in the same year. Talking about how he dealt with the situation, Arjun Kapoor said, “Initially maybe I must have tried to gain attention. But as I said, I had become very responsible. I became too aware. I matured ahead of my time because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t lose connection with my father. So I tried to process and analyse it… As long as he was happy with what he had done, I was okay with it. Even if I wasn’t ok with it, I rationalised it in my head at a young age. Thik hai, jo ho gaya woh ho gaya…”
Meanwhile, after having a rough patch in his career with back-to-back flops like The Lady Killer, Ek Villain Returns and Kuttey, the actor finally received praise for his performance in the movie Singham Again. He played the role of villain in the film which also starred Ajay Devgn, Ranveer Singh, Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Akshay Kumar, and Tiger Shroff.
