Media365
4 min readMumbaiOct 11, 2026 02:40 PM IST
Producer Ekta Kapoor has been a trailblazer in Indian television. In the 2000s, she transformed the television landscape by redefining daily soaps and changing the way content was produced. However, after nearly eight years of success, Ekta faced a difficult phase in her career. Recently, during a podcast with Ranveer Allahbadia, the producer recalled why 2008 was the worst year of her professional life.
Ekta Kapoor on facing a rough patch
While Ekta Kapoor was a gamechanger for Indian television, the acclaim didn’t come to her very easily. She faced a lot of hate on social media even back then. During the podcast, Ekta recalled that back in the day, when social media had just started, there was a hate club for her on Orkut. In fact, her and Aishwarya Rai’s hate club had the most number of followers back then. Sharing how many didn’t like how she disrupted the medium, Ekta said, “I was a girl, a kid, and I was clearly brash; of course I got targeted. People tried to pull me down, which is normal. If you come into a profession and disrupt it, automatically you would be hated.”
Also Read: Ekta Kapoor hits back at ‘unprofessional’ actors spreading ‘false information’ about her show, netizens say message is for Ram Kapoor
In 2008, Ekta Kapoor went through a bad phase professionally. Looking back at that time, she shared, “2008 was the worst year for me career-wise. That one year was very strong because nothing was going right for me. That year was really bad for me professionally. Mental health wise it was bad because I was not able to grapple with that. But the COVID time affected me the most mentally. Even though I didn’t give birth to my son, I had postpartum of my own. I was grappling with motherhood. I had never been stuck at home for so long, and I had never seen so much death around me. 2021-2022 was mentally the toughest year for me, and 2008 was the toughest professionally.”
‘I made a lot of mistakes’
Reflecting on the setbacks she faced in 2008, Ekta also opened up about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learnt during that period. “I had fewer things on paper back in 2008. Never work without having things on paper. Secondly, when you work with companies and you trust in professionals, professionals might leave the job, and then the company will change a professional, and you will be stuck. You have to be a little more cognizant of the fact that you have to build relationships beyond success. I used to believe I was the shiz. I am not the shiz. I can do great work, and I can do bad work. People should want to work with me beyond the good and bad. I learnt this in life. There were a lot of mistakes I made.”
“I didn’t respect the professionals who came in at that time. I thought I was the one who created the best content. Then I realised that many creators building a collaborative relationship have to be humble and collaborative instead of being overconfident. Overconfidence is not swag; it’s stupidity. You don’t need overconfidence to build momentum. I learnt humility, teamwork, and putting things on paper from that patch. I had some really big mentors on the way. I met Uday Shankar; he taught me so much about work ethic. I met a great number of strong professionals and learned that respect is mutual. Form can always be up and down, but your credibility cannot; your level of ethics cannot. People should not wait for your downfall,” she added.
Having navigated several ups and downs in her career, Ekta Kapoor continues to reinvent herself. After Lock Upp: Sach Ya Sazaa, she is now working on a film adaptation of her popular TV show Naagin. She also has Shootout at Dubai and The Dirty Picture 2 in the pipeline.
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