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Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap offered his two cents on the ongoing controversy surrounding the Prime Video series Made in Heaven, and cited a personal example to highlight his point. Anurag said that the conversation is no longer about representation, as the person making the allegations has developed narcissistic tendencies. Anurag didn’t take any names, but was talking about writer Yashica Dutt’s claims that the makers of Made in Heaven borrowed liberally from her life story for an episode of the show that dealt with a Dalit character’s ‘coming out’.
In an interview with The Quint, Anurag said that the person making the claims has lost credibility, because another person made similar claims against them. “You are exposing yourself. How are you not toxic anymore? How do I take you seriously?” Initially, Anurag said, the discussion was ‘healthy’, but then it became ‘toxic’, and has now become ‘very narcissistic’.
Asked how he ensures that credits on his projects are fair, Anurag said, “You do as much as you can. It’s the intention. I try to credit everyone; you do as much as you can. But sometimes, you skip something. Sometimes, some things are not in your control because you’re not controlling the whole show. Like in this case; the person attacked was not the one controlling the entire show. Intention is very important, and if you make a mistake despite having good intentions, apologising for it is a big step, which was done duly. Which we all do.”
The episode in question was directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, but the show as a whole is created by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti. Folling Yashica’s complaints, Zoya, Reema, Alankrita Shrivastava and Neeraj wrote a joint statement offering their side of the story, and said that they found inspiration not only from Yashica’s life and work, but from various other Dalit writers. Anurag worked with Neeraj on the Netflix show Sacred Games.
Citing an example from that show, he said, “When I cut out somebody’s role I call them and apologise. When I fired an actor from a show, before shooting with him, like Vijay Varma in Sacred Games. When I replaced him, I sent him a long message apologising and explaining why I am doing this.” Vijay himself had spoken about this incident, and had told mid-day in 2020, “They had locked me for one of the parts, one of the significant parts, and Netflix and Mukesh (Chhabra, casting director), and everyone had zeroed in, but Anurag (Kashyap, co-director) changed his mind last minute and he threw me out.”
Anurag concluded, “My problem is when you attack the one voice who is representing you, and that voice backs off, you are doing a much larger damage to that fight.” Anurag said that in this case, the individual has made themselves bigger than their cause.
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