‘Richa Chadha resented me, said Gangs of Wasseypur role ruined her career’: Why Anurag Kashyap warned Nishaanchi actor

Anurag Kashyap said that he warned Monika Panwar about what happened to Richa Chadha's career after she played a mother in Gangs of Wasseypur, and asked if she was okay with the same happening to her.

Richa Chadha and Anurag Kashyap at a SCREEN event. (Photo: Express Archive)

Anurag Kashyap said that Richa Chadha developed a resentment towards him, but he only understood the reason behind it years later. Richa broke onto the scene with a memorable role in Gangs of Wasseypur, but the project also put her in a box. She played the mother of Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s character in the film, and was consequently stereotyped as a mother by the industry. Anurag said that he discovered what happened much later, when she spoke about it in an interview. He felt that Richa could’ve just spoken honestly to him. With this experience behind him, he warned his Nishaanchi actor about the possible perils of playing a mother at a young age, and promised her that he would be by her side if she gets boxed in as well.

In an interview with The Lallantop, he said, “This industry stereotypes women. Once they play mothers, they’re stuck playing mothers forever. Not many people have the courage to play a mother to a 30-year-old man. We approached a lot of actresses, but none of them agreed. We ran out of options, and that was the last role to be cast.” Recalling the Richa story, Anurag added, “Richa Chadha played Nagma in Gangs of Wasseypur. This was at the start of her career; she’d only done Oye Lucky Lucky Oye before that. She was amazing, but the industry stereotyped her. She wouldn’t get offers for main leads. She developed resentments. Once, she said in an interview that playing Nawazuddin’s mother in Gangs of Wasseypur ruined her career. But she said this many years later. That’s when I understood why she had certain resentments. And I thought, ‘You could’ve just told me’.”

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He continued, “I told Monika very honestly that I have been through this experience before. But it’s easier to take a young actor and make them look as opposed to taking an old actor and making them look young. It takes a lot of VFX to de-age a person, and that’s very expensive. I told Monika what the consequences could be. I told her that she has the freedom to turn down the part, and if she accepts and develops resentments later, I’m here to get her back on track. But she is a trained actor from NSD; she saw this as a challenge and said that she would love to do it.”

In a blog post, Richa had written about her experience working with Anurag on the cult classic films, and had revealed how much she was paid for them. She said that she should ideally still be making money off the project, considering its popularity. But the concept of royalties, she wrote, is alien to Bollywood. “I was paid Rupees 2,50,000 (two lacs fifty thousand) for Gangs Of Wasseypur both parts and that’s alright,” she wrote, which Anurag later confirmed. “She is right. Most actors and crew got paid similar amounts or less and I had to forfeit my entire fees to make GOW. Funny thing is we still own 50% IPR on GOW and we have never seen a penny on it or know about it’s income. For the studio it’s still a flop,” he wrote on X.

In an interview with Barkha Dutt, she said that she’s barely interacted with Anurag after they finished Gangs of Wasseypur. “I have done one film with him, in 2010-11, which was Gangs of Wasseypur, which went on to become a cult film. When he produced films I was in, like Masaan, etc, I had very, very limited interaction with him. I don’t really hang out with him, I haven’t. In the past decade I’ve met him… I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve met him, mostly at screenings,” she said in 2020.

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