According to Johnny Lever, "insecure" actors would cut his scenes, which is why he now works less frequently: "Comedy is dead,"

 According to legendary comedian Johnny Lever, the primary reason he no longer works as frequently as he used to is that Bollywood films no longer require comic relief characters.

Johnny Lever, a household name in comedy, lamented the state of the industry and stated that Bollywood films no longer require his brand of humor. In a recent interview, he suggested that insecure actors demanded that they be given comic scenes as well to prevent Johnny from receiving all the praise. Additionally, as a direct consequence of this, the number of characters providing comic relief diminished to nil.

Johnny gave an example of his breakthrough film, Baazigar, starring Shah Rukh Khan, in an interview with ETimes. According to him, the film "didn't have a writer," so he had to come up with all of the comedy scenes himself. And he succeeded because of his "youthful exuberance."

He responded in Hindi when asked why he doesn't appear in as many films as he used to: "I turn down work because the writing is bad these days." You mention Baazigar; I was the only writer on that film. All of the punches came from me. Those were good times when we put in a lot of effort. However, we no longer have writers of comedies. "Johnny bhai will handle it," it says. This is not how things work. First, we need a blueprint."

He went on to say, "Comedy was respected in the past. There is very little comedy in movies these days. I used to get such a positive response back in the day that my scenes would become the highlights of the movie. My scenes would sometimes be edited because the heroes would feel threatened. They used to feel insecure when they saw how the audience would react to my scenes. Additionally, they began requesting comedy scenes from writers. Comedy scenes would begin to be distributed by the writers. Also, my roles got smaller and smaller, as you can see now. The comedy is over.

He stated that very few directors, including Rohit Shetty, still place a high value on comedy in their productions. He added, however, that heroes and villains are all these days being funny. There is no need for actors like him to provide comedic relief. He made his most recent appearance in Shetty's Cirkus.