Indian National Award-winning actress Kangana Ranaut got into an ugly spat with a journalist from an Indian new agency claiming that he was running a “smear campaign” against her. She was on call to launch a song from her new film ‘Judgemental Hai Kya’ on July 7 when the press conference in Mumbai turned vitriolic.
Reporter Justin Rao, who works for PTI, was at the receiving end of her allegations, denied her charges and claimed that it was a case of a star in a position of power intimidating a journalist.
In a video of the altercation that’s been circulated widely, Ranaut is shown losing her cool as her co-star Rajkummar Rao observes awkwardly. Producer Ekta Kapoor tries to calm the pair down several times, but is not particularly successful.
“You’ve such nasty thoughts. How do you come up with such nasty thoughts? You bashed my film, ‘Manikarnika’… Have I made a mistake by making a film? You are calling me a jingoistic person for making a film on nationalism,” said Ranaut, who refused to answer any question put forward by Rao.
When the journalist protested that she was being unfair, she claimed that he was her friend who had lunch with her in her vanity van for three hours. The actress, who’s known for her mercurial personality, even claimed that he texted her in the past.
Rao refuted Ranaut’s claims and asked her to share screenshots of his text messages as proof. Ranaut doesn’t oblige, claiming this isn’t the place
Later that evening, Ranaut’s sister and manager Rangoli Chandel took to Twitter to attack the journalist, whose social media fan following has doubled since the verbal duel.
