‘There was Roger Moore, Sophia Loren, and Amitabh Bachchan’: Jaya Bachchan recalls parent-teacher meetings at Abhishek-Shweta’s school

Jaya Bachchan recalled the look of silent embarrassment that she and her husband shared with celebrities such as Roger Moore and Sophia Loren, after their children scored poor marks in the exclusive school that they all attended. In the latest episode of her granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda’s podcast, What the Hell Navya, Jaya said that the media’s fascination for star-kids was only limited to India. At school, ‘nobody cared’ who Abhishek Bachchan and Shweta Bachchan were.
Jaya and Shweta joined Navya for the fifth episode of her podcast, in which they spoke about their relationship with the media, and what it is like to live as a public figure.

She said, “When they were in school — they were in a good school, but not an in-your-face school — there were a lot of celebrity kids. But nobody cared. Nobody gave a damn. And one of my best memories of their school time is once, at the parent-teacher meeting, they put a tag saying ‘Shweta Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan’, one on me, one on nana. All parents had it.”
She added, “And then we finished, and of course, it was not a very encouraging meeting. So, we came out, and it was snowing. Everybody was wearing their thick coats, and standing. There were three celebrities, with three report cards. There was Roger Moore, there was Sophia Loren, and there was Amitabh Bachchan. All three had report cards, and all three looked at each other and shook their heads, saying, ‘What are our kids doing?’ But nobody gave a damn. Nobody cared. Nobody gave you any special treatment. Nobody ill-treated you. Celebrity kids have this problem.”
Abhishek went to the Jamnabai Narsee School as a child, but Jaya was probably referring to his stint at the Aiglon College in Switzerland. He dropped out of college in the US to return home and help out with his father’s troubled ABCL company. He made his debut as an actor in 2000.