Kangana’s claim hurting my reputation: Apurva
Film writer Apurva Asrani (left) is highly upset about actor Kangana Ranaut (right) getting an ‘additional story and dialogue’ credit on the poster of her new film Simran, and with it appearing before his own credit. He has brought this up on Facebook and Twitter.
Apurva tells us, “I have made my stand clear with the (Facebook) post, and more than being irked about my credit given after Kangana’s, this episode is damaging my reputation as a writer.”
Neither Kangana nor her spokesperson responded to our attempts to reach them.
In a long Facebook post, Apurva acknowledged that Kangana had “improvised” some of his dialogues, and “those improvs were excellent”. But before that, he wrote: “Ms Ranaut has been claiming in several interviews that Hansal Mehta, the director of Simran, approached her with just a one line screenplay of the film. She says that the story was [a] dark & gritty thriller at that stage and that she herself developed it into a light, fun film. This completely discredits me and my efforts, and I have to call out this lie .... ”
In support, filmmaker Goldie Behl tweeted: “Nice feel @Apurvasrani hv heard of additional dialogues but can’t understand ‘additional story’. A story is a story how can u hv additional.” To this, Apurva replied: “Thanks @ GOLDIEBEHL :) I think @ mehtahansal is the best person to answer that question.”
While Hansal Mehta was unavailable, his spokesperson said, “When something similar happened during the release of Queen (also starring Kangana), there wasn’t any hue and cry about it. Then why is there so much of an uproar over this?”