Abhay Deol says Anurag Kashyap’s DevD glamourised alcohol, drugs: ‘That wasn’t the point, not what I had envisioned’

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Mentioning that the glamourisation of hypermasculinity is problematic, Abhay recently stated that his aim when addressing such themes is to critique, not glorify them. “That’s why DevD came to me; the idea was to call out his toxic masculinity and empower the women. That was the idea behind it. I stuck to the book where he (Devdas; in the Anurag directorial the character’s name is Devendra Singh Dhillon aka Dev) dies in the end; but instead of an alcohol or drug overdose, he starts dealing in drugs to support himself, the cops chase him, he doesn’t know where to go, so he runs Paro’s house and gets shot outside her door,” he said during a chat with Filmfare, pointing out that by then, the character had become ugly and unattractive.

Reflecting on the film’s impact, Abhay noted that, unfortunately, it had the opposite effect of what he intended. “Eventually, the film kind of became cool and people saw that and wanted to do more drugs and alcohol. I was like, ‘that was not the point.’ I have literally had friends say, ‘please tell my nephew that ecstasy is not good for them.’ I also had a friend who called me saying he had finished an entire bottle of vodka. That glamourisation was entirely away from what I had envisioned,” Abhay said, while acknowledging that he, nonetheless, still enjoys watching DevD today.

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Besides Abhay as Dev, the film starred Mahie Gill as Parminder “Paro” Kaur and Kalki Koechlin as Leni aka Chandramukhi (Chanda). Penned by Anurag and Vikramaditya Motwane, DevD was bankrolled by Ronnie Screwvala.

“Even the women in the movie… for example Chanda, she was an escort from east Europe and was proud of what she did. She was like, ‘I’m sorry, I make my money, live my own life and I’m not going to apologise for being a prostitute.’ Everybody’s a prostitute at some level. And we demonised sex. So there was a lot of women empowerment as well in it to show that whether she’s a hooker or a housewife, she’s a woman,” he pointed out. While the movie’s cinematography was handled by Rajeev Ravi, it was edited by Aarti Bajaj and music composed by Amit Trivedi.