A decade ago, Bombay Velvet was one of the most anticipated films of the year. The project promised a rare convergence of two distinct worlds: Anurag Kashyap, often hailed as the messiah of independent cinema, was making his first major leap into commercial filmmaking, while the film boasted a big studio backing and stars like Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma. However, the film turned out to be a major commercial disaster, so much so that Kashyap vowed never to make a film with stars again. The experience also strained his relationship with the lead actors, especially Ranbir Kapoor.
In an exclusive conversation with SCREEN, Kashyap opened up about how Ranbir gets pissed off whenever the film comes up in the media. “I think Ranbir was very upset that, and he keeps saying, ‘Why do you keep talking about Bombay Velvet? Just ignore it. The film didn’t work, it didn’t work, but you don’t have to talk about it all the time.’ But people ask me questions all the time, how can I just ignore that?”
Kashyap also reflected on the immediate aftermath of the film’s failure and the difficulty he faced in confronting his co-stars. “We don’t meet often. Whenever we meet, we just hug and greet each other. And at the beginning, I just didn’t know how to face them because they had given me a lot of trust and love. And I was dealing with my own demons. So I needed to come out of that and make a very small film. I was very focused on Raman Raghav. But slowly, I think, we became distant.”
Also Read | 10 years of Bombay Velvet: Anurag Kashyap’s messy love letter to cinema that was never understood
Anurag Kashyap said that the studio claimed audiences were put off by Ranbir Kapoor’s hair.
He also shared one of the more bizarre conclusions the studio research team reached after the film flopped. “The debacle of the film was such that when they did the research, the shocking thing was, people didn’t like Ranbir’s hair. They said that audiences got upset with Ranbir’s hair, because he had curled it up. And it was a choice that we all made, we designed it like that. And when I heard this, I was like, that’s the most absurd reason I can hear. One can say, ‘Oh, the film didn’t work for me,’ but coming up and saying hair didn’t work, and because of that it didn’t get an opening and people didn’t go to see the film because they were put off by the hair, was absurd.”
Kashyap also revealed that Bombay Velvet was originally conceived with Ranveer Singh in mind. However, the studio backing the project insisted on Ranbir Kapoor instead. Recalling the change, he said, “The film was not a high-budget film initially. It was sold at a very high budget, and it took me time to get around to that, and to the change of actor. Earlier, when I wrote it, it was for Ranveer Singh. He was much fresher then. But everybody sold it on the basis of Ranbir, and the actor changed. It took me at least a year to wrap my head around it.”
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