Do we like Kapil Sharma?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful in his own words turned up and there's real giving, but a few contested moments (a 2017 flight stoush, a joke that copped heat) keep it from the top end.
Kapil Sharma was born in Amritsar in 1981, the son of a Punjab Police head constable. He worked at a phone booth for pocket money, taught theatre to kids to pay his college fees, then won India's Great Indian Laughter Challenge in 2007. That win is what turned a hustler into a name.
The big blow-up was in 2017. Reports said he allegedly verbally abused and assaulted co-star Sunil Grover on a flight home from Australia. He apologised publicly, but Grover said he had been hurt deeply and quit the show. The pair got back together years later, and Grover is in the Season 5 cast. That's an ugly night, but the repair job counts for something.
Then there's the mouth. In 2016 he tweeted at the Prime Minister that a Mumbai council worker had asked him for a bribe, and he later apologised on national television. In 2022 director Vivek Agnihotri said the show wouldn't invite The Kashmir Files team, and Kapil called it a one-sided story. Where you land on that depends on whether you believe Agnihotri or Kapil.
On the harm check, I found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no conspiracy slide, in his own words. The closest thing is the December 2024 Atlee row: he asked the filmmaker whether stars ever failed to recognise him, viewers called it a dig at his looks, and singer Chinmayi Sripada called it “distasteful and crass”. Kapil denied it and said he'd been misread. That's one contested gag, not a pattern, and nothing turned up on his stance on trans issues, climate or vaccines. His main show is a mainstream family comedy with a long-time ensemble.
The recent drama is that he's been on the receiving end. His Surrey cafe in Canada was shot at several times in 2025, and members of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang were linked to the attacks and allegedly claimed responsibility. At a Netflix event he joked that gangsters from a couple of countries were after him, then asked the crew to cut it when he realised he was live. Police made arrests, and he said afterwards he never feels unsafe in India.
The good stuff is real. In March 2020 he announced a Rs 50 lakh donation to the Prime Minister's relief fund for the pandemic response. He's also kept a tight ensemble together, with Sunil Grover, Kiku Sharda, Archana Puran Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu all in the Season 5 cast.