Kangana Ranaut and other Bollywood casting controversies

Nobody can fault National Award-winning Indian actress Kangana Ranaut for playing it safe when it comes to her career and life. As she unveiled her look from her latest biopic 'Thalaivi', based on the life and times of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and actress Jayalalithaa, she drew an avalanche of reactions. The poster, which showed a puffed up Ranaut in a green sari, drew mixed responses and unleashed a meme fest on social media in the last two days. Ranaut is largely facing flak about being an unnatural choice to play the larger-than-life political leader who ruled the South. Isn’t she naturally diminutive to play Jayalalithaa? Comments rage from the sublime to the scathing – while many hailed her brave choice to spearhead this film, some felt she looked like an inflated doll. While it’s too early to write off this June 25th release based on just a poster, tabloid! takes a look at a few other controversial casting calls made by Bollywood filmmakers in the past.

Taapsee Pannu and Bhumi Pednekar in 'Saand Ki Aankh': Don’t get us wrong here. We admire Taapsee Pannu, 32, and 29-year-old Bhumi Pednekar’s propensity to take on unconventional roles, but this is one of the rare instances when their choices misfired. Their recent release 'Saand Ki Aankh' saw them play sixty-something shooter dadis (grandmas) Prakashi Tomar and Chandro Tomar with admirable feistiness. But sadly, they weren’t wholly convincing and it ended up looking like a costume drama. But they both believed that they had made the right choice and that actors shouldn’t be condemned for the roles they take on. “Actors in the past have played roles of an age they don’t belong to and they continue to do so. For instance, the sexual orientation that an actor plays in a film may not comply with who they are in real life. You don’t always take a gay man for a gay role. And if you begin to comply with such parameters, then you are questioning my definition of being an actor,” said Pannu in an interview with Gulf News tabloid!.

Priyanka Chopra in 'Mary Kom': She was earnest in her turn as an Olympic boxer from North East India, but there’s no denying that it wasn’t an easy fit. Chopra didn’t look anything like Kom and her digitally alter-eyelids didn’t help her cause much. In the run up to the release, debates about why actors with roots in north-east India weren’t considered raged on. There were quite a few for director Omung Kumar to consider for the title role such as the National Award-winning Gitanjali Thapa from Sikkim or Bala Hijam from Manipur. But in the end, a Bollywood star Chopra with immense box-office bankability spelt commercial success and economics won over art, yet again.

Bhumi Pednekar in 'Bala': The film was a wonderful comedy with Ayushmann Khurrana playing a middle-aged man grappling with premature baldness. It was a movie that had a take on the prejudices against balding men and it even tried to highlight the issue of our inherent racism towards dark-skinned women. Bhumi Pednekar played his deliberately-darkened childhood mate, who was bullied for her dark skin tone by the hero and society at large. She represented the millions of women in India who are made to feel inferior due to their dark skin. The only issue? Bhumi Pednekar isn’t naturally dark and painting her in swathes of dark brown foundation made her act look fake. While we may call it an epic miscast, both the director and its main actor defended the casting call with all their might. “It’s extremely unfair. It’s every actor’s dream to portray different characters and don different looks. By that logic [of dark skinned actor playing such roles], then only cricketers should play cricketers on screen or musicians playing musicians on screen. As actors you are supposed to be a part of the look. It’s the director’s discretion on whom he should cast to bring credibility to the role he has written. Bhumi is a credible actor,” said Khurrana in an interview with Gulf News tabloid!.

Shraddha Kapoor in 'Haseena': In this biopic, Shraddha Kapoor was on call to play a dreaded mafia queen Haseena Parker, gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s sister. But Kapoor soon found out that piling on eight kilos didn’t mean that she looked convincing in the part. The film showed Haseena’s journey from being a teenager to a 43-year-old hardened woman. No body suits or silicone prosthetics in the mouth – to give a fuller face -- could rescue Kapoor from this doomed project, which failed spectacularly at the box office.

Vivek Oberoi in 'PM Narendra Modi': This fan-boy tribute of a film about Indian Prime Minister Modi was deeply flawed. And despite Oberoi putting in a lot of hard work into this role, it did not stick. It took him six hours to get ready for a scene, but none of that could make us forget that Oberoi was a misfit in this glorifying tribute to the world leader.