Guilty film director Ruchi Narain posed with Kiara Advani, Akansha Ranjan, Taher Shabbir and other at the trailer launch in Mumbai.(Photo: Varinder Chawla)
Filmmaker Ruchi Narain’s upcoming thriller Guilty got its primary male cast after multiple rejections by top male actors. Producer Karan Johar believes it was because the male actors didn’t want to work with a female director.
Narain made the revelation today at the trailer launch of Guilty. The film stars Kiara Advani, Akansha Ranjan and Taher Shabbir.
“We were trying to cast a film, and a lot male stars said no. I was so angry. I was talking to Karan, and he told me, ‘There’s really no reason for them to say no to you because the film is really good. The script is really good. You have got a body of work so they should be saying yes, but I have a feeling it could be because they aren’t comfortable working with a woman filmmaker.’
“I said, ‘I love this film, but I am not going to have a sex change for it.’ The anger of that did fuel me to make this film,” Ruchi Narain told reporters.
Her remarks were part of a reply to a question asked by an indianexpress.com journalist that whether people have difficulty taking instructions from a woman.
Ruchi Narain, who is known for writing Hazaroen Khawishein Aisi and Calcutta Mail, agreed that it’s always different when a woman is at the helm of things as compared to a man in charge.
“There is a difference when you are a woman and are heading something. One forms a way to deal with those things. I wrote the seed of the idea with Kanika (Dhillon) and Atika (Chohan). We were discussing issues which women face on a day-to-day basis. It is different for a woman and for a man which you learn by observation. At the end of the day, when you want to do something, we all find our own ways to do it,” the director said.
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When asked if it was indeed sad that women had to find ways to achieve something, while men get it easy because of their gender. Ruchi Narain said both genders make different arguments when it comes to inequality, which is also something she has tried to explore through Guilty.
“I was always aware there is going to be another side. If you talk to men, they also sometimes feel that women get an easy pass, but we would be like, excuse me, that doesn’t happen. There are two sides to an argument, which I wanted to capture in this film,” Narain said.
Guilty, which will stream on Netflix from March 6, is expected to explore the different versions of truth when a small-town girl accuses her college heartthrob of rape.
