Abish Mathew on comedians being trolled for past sketches, tweets

Mumbai: Several stand-up comics have lately been trolled for their sketches and tweets of the past, and renowned comedian Abish Mathew feels we have surely seen times when society at large was more open-minded.

“If you go back into the past and pick up anything, remember the conversation might have been different at that point of time,” reasons Abish, about things that might have been said or written in the past.

“I think we need to get to a point where all sides are like, okay, I dislike this. How do I have this conversation with this person without making it a fight? And when you do legality, then that means you don’t want to have a debate. You just want to make a point,” Abish emphasised, while speaking to a website.

For the unversed, comedians like Agrima Joshua and Rohan Joshi have recently been called out on social media for allegedly hurting religious sentiments with their acts in the past.

“We need to remember that whether you are a journalist, a musician, or a filmmaker, what you did a few years ago is not what you do today. I believe in absolute freedom of speech. That means I also believe in absolute freedom of speech from anyone,” he reasoned.

“So, for example, if I say something that you did not like, I would love to have a conversation about this. But what happens in the current media is that it’s tough to have a conversation when people don’t want to have a conversation. So, then it is the imperative of whoever it is on the other side to do whatever is needed. They have to make their voices heard. Making voices heard is not a wrong thing, and I would never stand against it even if the voice is against me. The only thing I come from is, let’s have a peaceful conversation,” Abish added.

On the work front, Abish has come up with the new season of his talk show “Son Of Abish”. This time, he shot the episodes at his home owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s not just me, but the entire team is at home. So, even data transfer is done online. There is no human contact in the back-end as well. As a mandate, none of us are meeting,” Abish shared his experience of shooting from home.

He found the process quite exciting. “I’ve never seen it as challenging. I’ve seen it as exciting. We were so excited to build this season. It is like a group of scientists working on the project. So there is no pattern, there is no format. So we are creating a format. It’s like a new show altogether,” he said.