Anurag Kashyap recalled how he had a tough time while casting for Paro and Chanda’s role for his 2009 film, Dev D.
Anurag Kashyap’s 2009 film, Dev D is recognized as one of his celebrated works. But back then when the film was in the making, the director had to struggle a lot in the casting department. The ‘Black Friday’ director recently recalled how actresses refused to audition for the female characters when he approached them for this film.
As per a report in Indian report, Anurag while speaking at the Marrakech International Film Festival, walked down the memory lane, and spoke about it.
The ‘Maharaja’ actor said, “I made the two women the protagonists of the film, and I didn’t hold back on the language or anything. Girls refused to audition for the film when they read the script. I got slapped by one actress’ boyfriend, who said, ‘How dare you send the script to my girlfriend?’. I was like, ‘Okay, sorry’. My producer threw the script down and called it vulgar. It actually got made because of my producer’s wife, who loved it.”
It seems like Kashyap here was referring to Ronnie Screwvala’s wife.
Anurag Kashyap‘s Dev D, which was considered to be his first certified hit, is a modern-day take on Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s classic Bengali novel, Devdas. Describing the original book as ‘misogynistic’, Kashyap said that he wanted to approach Devdas in a different way.
He said, “I took the three characters of Devdas, and subverted every expectation that the audience might have. What really shocked people was that the two female characters in the most misogynistic book had agency. They had more agency than the guy; the guy had nothing. I had women fighting for the film, standing by me, but men told me that I’m spoiling the culture of the country. There was a two-way fight.”
Explaining why he tweaked the original climax in Dev D, Anurag said, “I changed the famous ending of Devdas, because the book thrives on creating empathy for this despicable character, who dies, so you’re supposed to feel sad. I said, ‘I’m not going to kill him.”
Dev D featured Abhay Deol, Mahie Gill and Kalki Koechlin in leading roles. Nawazuddin Siddiqui was a part of the popular ‘Emotional Atyachar’ in the film.
