There was a time when comedy king and actor Johnny Lever used to have dozens of releases in a year, but now he makes his presence felt only in a handful of films. Earlier, Lever was usually the first choice for every comedy film, because his comic timing was the USP of such films, but now Johnny’s activism has reduced on screen. Recently, he opened up on why he is rarely seen on-screen nowadays.

In a latest interview, the veteran actor said that the genre of comedy was given more respect when he was active. Revealing the reason behind not coming with more films, he disclosed that insecure heroes would be threatened by his comedy scenes and ask to do comedy instead. They would also ask writers to cut down his screen time.

Johnny began by saying, “Nowadays comedy films are not being made like before. At present, the writing has become bad. Comedy has gone away.”

“The lead actors would cut my scenes at the last minute because of fear of my presence in the films. My scenes would be edited. They started feeling threatened by me. The actors even asked the writers to write comedy scenes for them as well. The writers would start distributing comedy scenes. Due to this my roles kept getting smaller, which is what you’re seeing now,” he added.

For the unversed, the comedian actor was last seen in the Gujarati comedy Jaysuk Zdpayo and Rohit Shetty’s family entertainer Cirkus. He has been part of over 300 Hindi films. Before making it big in Bollywood, Johnny used to do stand-ups and mimicry in live shows. He has won the Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Comic Role twice for Deewana Mastana and Dulhe Raja.