Vijay Deverakonda is irritated because of the social media backlash that he’s got from the Actor’s Adda that he did recently with stars like Ranveer Singh, Ayushmann Khurrana, Deepika Padukone, Parvathy Thiruvothu and others. During the interaction, the point about Deverakonda’s film, Arjun Reddy, being toxic and misogynistic was raised and created a lot of buzz on social media. Deverakonda, who says he didn’t speak up during the interaction because of various reasons, says he wanted to present his side of the story now.
In the latest chat with film critic Baradwaj Rangan on Film Companion, Deverakonda first tackles the issue of Arjun Reddy being labelled ‘misogynistic’.
“Misogyny is hatred of women. Arjun Reddy loves women, he loves Priti he loves her from the point when he lays sight on her, till he starts self-destructing in her absence. He loves his grandmother. The only reason he came back from his self-destructing mode is the passing of his grandmother. They share a huge attachment. So, where is the women-hatred that I am not seeing?” argues Deverakonda.
“My next biggest mystery is - thousands of women, married, unmarried, young girls, college girls, older women, all loved Arjun Reddy, all love me, so I was wondering did they all not see the misogyny? Were they blind to it? So what I think is - where these people saw love, a bunch of women saw hatred, so it’s a perspective thing,” says the actor during the chat.
When asked if all of the talk and controversy around Arjun Reddy will affect the way Deverakonda looks at scripts, the actor replied, “I think it will start affecting, and this is something that shouldn’t happen with people who are making the right film with the right intention. I think you start thinking - arre again this will make one huge mess, can we just do without and... I think it does in some way. And then when you feel that it is really justified that the character has to behave in that way, then you keep it, then you decide I will take it on, I will take on the criticism, I will take on this little rants and I will explain my side.”
On the issue of films influencing society, this is what Deverakonda had to say, “There’s one huge conversation about movies influencing people, I saw Wolf of Wall Street, I don’t want to go and do stock scams, I loved that film, I watched it as a film, but if I was someone wanting to do a scam and was well-versed with stocks and then I saw Wolf of Wall Street and I had that intention, I’d be like, oh maybe I could do this, it could make me money.”
You can watch the complete interview with Vijay Deverakonda here:
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)