Amazon Drops Tanmay Bhat, Keeps Kanan Gill for Comicstaan Season 2 Over #MeToo Concerns

Tanmay Bhat will not be a part of Comicstaan 2, Amazon told Gadgets 360 in a statement, while Kanan Gill will remain a part of the show. “We are no longer working with Tanmay Bhat,” an Amazon India spokesperson said Wednesday. “But we will continue working with Kanan Gill.” Both Bhat and Gill served as judges and mentors on the first season of the reality comedy hunt series. They were two of the biggest names on Comicstaan, which also involved Sapan Verma, Kenny Sebastian, and Biswa Kalyan Rath among several others.

Back in October, Gill was accused of inappropriate behaviour by several women. Bhat was ousted from All India Bakchod, the sketch comedy group he co-founded, over allegations of inaction over sexual harassment. His fellow co-founder, Gursimran Khamba, was put “on a temporary leave of absence” until AIB could properly look into the allegations made against him.

Khamba, too, has a project in the works at Amazon called Gormint, a political satire that was earlier known as The Ministry. Amazon said that Khamba is currently not working on the show pending a full investigation, and its fate has yet to be decided. A spokesperson cited the length of the investigation and the involvement of the legal team as reasons for the delay in issuing a public response.

Not everyone has been so particular with their decisions. Hours after AIB said it was disassociating itself from Bhat and Khamba, Hotstar announced that it had cancelled the then-ongoing third season of On Air with AIB with “immediate effect”. The Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), the organising body of the Mumbai Film Festival, axed a feature film called Chintu Ka Birthday from its lineup later the same day, because it had been produced by AIB.