Indian Filmmaker Hansal Mehta has finally decided to break his vow of silence regarding actress Kangana Ranaut and her behaviour. Simran, the film Hansal Mehta was directing in the year 2017, starred Kangana Ranaut and the movie gave rise to many controversies after it was released. The movie also had Sohum Shah, Catherine Dyer, Rupinder Nagra and many such actors in the cast.
The director even though called it a painful experience, says that he does not hold any sort of bitterness against the actress. The writer and editor of the film, Apurva Asrani, claimed that Kangana used to steal all the credit of the work he used to do and that she also changed the version of the story wrote by Apurva. Standing in her defence, Kangana Ranaut said that she reworked his original script as it was not commercially viable. There have been many such instances where Kangana has claimed to have worked on making the script much better, whereas such claims were put down by Apurva saying that the idea of the main character being from Gujrat and a divorcee came from his side. Hansal Mehta, calling the work of this movie a “painful memory”, was quoted saying to Huffington Post that “I sometimes wish I never made it. There was no need. It was an unnecessary aberration in my career. It makes me sad, it could’ve been a much better film. It had the potential to be a great film. It used to sadden me but now it’s…It was a painful time. Every day. Beyond that, it’s difficult to speak about it. I don’t even revisit it. There was a time after the film released, I went through a very low phase mentally. Took therapy. The film affected my mental health. I went into a shell, I did not want to meet people. I was in a period of very low self-esteem.”
He further added, “I’ll be honest with you, I enjoyed Kangana’s company outside the set and I had a great time with her. We used to go out and she would always ask me to choose restaurants. We’d have a great meal together, party together, I would choose a good wine, all that was fun. (But on the sets) It went out of my control completely. That’s not a happy situation to be in. Other than dealing with the fact that she (Kangana) completely took charge of the set and began directing other actors, I lost a lot of money too. Which had nothing to do with her. Financially it hit me badly. I was stupid enough to sign some papers when the film was stuck for some reason, which got me into a financial and legal tangle. So almost a year-and-a-half, there was arbitration going on in court. I’ve sort of emerged back. You have to go through what you have to go through. It was tough.” which was followed by him saying, “We haven’t spoken for a long time. On Twitter, we’ve had some pleasant exchanges. She invited me for tea one day just to talk so it’s fine that way. There’s no reason to have any interaction. If I see her, it’ll be very cordial. I have no ill feelings for anyone. I consciously did it, she didn’t pull me in. The reason I haven’t been bitter is that you have to always keep the room open for mending. You never know who you’ll meet and when. I am very philosophical about it. Kangana, everything aside, is a good actor. She’s a fantastic actor. So who knows? Tomorrow there might be something and we might want to make a film together. Bitterness is pointless.”
Hansal Mehta also said that the release of Omerta, a movie featuring Rajkumar Rao, was of no help to him and things only began to improve when he began working on the script of Scam 1992, back in the year 2017.
