EXCLUSIVE: Deepika Padukone on criticism on Gehraiyaan: Hope the audience will be less judgmental & more empathetic

Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone is winning accolades for her latest film Gehraiyaan. The Diva has delivered a stellar performance in the Shakun Batra directorial that also features Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ananya Panday in pivotal roles. But right before the movie was released, there was immense criticism and judgment over the film’s content and its idea of normalising infidelity.

In an exclusive chat with Bollywood Bubble, Deepika Padukone talks about balancing her commercial films with some special content-driven ones. She also opened up on criticism & judgment on Gehraiyaan and if the mindset of the audience is changing.

In an exclusive interview with us Deepika said, “100 per cent, I think that lot of the cues that we take today as creative people where there is a director, writer, actors and the choices that we make most certainly come from the fact that today we are catering to an evolved audience and we are catering to a hungry audience. Also, we are catering to an audience that is so ready for all kinds of content. So, Yes! most certainly I think that if the fact that they are ready is what gives me the confidence to say YES to a film like Gehraiyaan.”

She even opened up if she was prepared for the judgement post the film release. Deepika said, “Hopefully they won’t when the film is done. Hopefully, by the end of the movie, they will realise that we have been conditioned to think of films like this and conditioned to think of characters like this. But what if we step out of that for a second and are actually shown characters that are slightly different from the way we have been conditioned to view them. What if we show you a film now that actually tells you, explains to you and takes you on this journey as to why this character makes the choices she makes.”

“I think the minute you enter the mind of the character and understood the motive behind the choices based on the circumstances they are in and therefore the choices they make and the result of that the consequences automatically, the hope is that you become less judgemental and more empathetic towards these characters.”

 

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The movie humanises the grey side of everybody. I think that we have been conditioned to live our lives in society as very black and white, this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad. Who has set these parameters? who set those boundaries? and again it’s not to say that certain choices that these characters make could be questioned will be based on your upbringing or my upbringing or based on the exposure we have had. We might think that but hopefully, by the end of the film we might judge it less and say ya ok sure I as so and so or I as Deepika would not have made these choices. But I still understand why Alisha made these choices and be less judgemental about the choices and obviously the consequences of those choices.

Watch the entire interview here:

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