Sandeep Reddy Vanga on his female characters in Animal: ‘The way Rashmika was calling Ranbir, felt like she was calling a kid’

Sandeep Reddy Vanga is currently basking in the success of his latest film Animal. While the movie is being criticised for glorifying toxic masculinity and violence, it continues to mint money at the box office. In a recent interview, the filmmaker spoke about the equation between the film’s lead characters – Ranbir Kapoor’s Ranvijay and Rashmika Mandanna’s Geetanjali – and how women in his films are bold.

Speaking about how women initiate sex in both his films Arjun Reddy and Animal, Sandeep told Galatta Plus, “I never thought this. This is not deliberate. I didn’t deliberately put the approach. See what discussion they had in the flight, other than you know, ‘Don’t talk about my father like that. What do you mean? You know my father’s is a great father.’ With that line I wanted to show that this is a shift of discussion. Hardly they spoke about anything and now you see there’s a big argument happening. I thought that would be nice dramatic quotient.”

He added, “When you see people living in US, the kind of lifestyle they have. When you come in a house and stay with the in-laws, it is not the same because women are very independent in US, especially Indian women. If you ask any of them, they doesn’t want to come to India because they feel in US, there is a much independent space. In the film, it’s a palace they live in. I feel everything is in control. About the sleeping on the lap thing, I feel in the film the way Rashmika was calling him, I felt like she was calling a kid.”

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The Animal director also admitted that Ranvijay’s character can only be controlled by his wife Geetanjali and that he has dropped hints about the same in various scenes in the film.

Also read | Animal box office collection day 19: Ranbir Kapoor’s blockbuster to overtake Gadar 2 today, will pass Rs 850 cr before getting dunked by Dunki

On its 19th day of release, Animal made Rs 5.5 crore in India, according to industry tracker Sacnilk, taking its total domestic collections to Rs 523.69 crore. The film’s global collection has crossed the Rs 850 crore mark.