Power Games

It takes a village to create a Hindi-film star. Behind-the-scenes, there are teams of managers and publicists working hard to create and maintain the image of the star who employs them. Working long before the star wakes and long after the star goes to bed, these people are invisible to most of us but are well-known power-players inside the industry. Haroon sits-down with Shah Rukh Khan’s former publicist Mandvi Sharma and pap-king Viral Bhayani to find out how the two sides actually work together to help create a star; Mandvi talks about why most star-managers in Mumbai are women and Viral talks about why photographers like him are still important in helping an actor jump from the B to the A-List.