Following the demise of Former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Thursday night, actor Anupam Kher and filmmaker Hansal Mehta engaged in a war of words on Friday over their movie ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ based on the PM Singh.
The 2019 film The Accidental Prime Minister is directed by Vijay Gutte and written by Mayank Tewari. The film stars Anupam Kher as Manmohan Singh, Akshaye Khanna as Sanjaya Baru, Suzanne Bernert as Sonia Gandhi, and Arjun Mathur as Rahul Gandhi, among others. Hansal Mehta was not only an actor in the film but served as its creative producer. The film is an adaptation of the book The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru.
On Friday, Journalist Veer Sanghvi criticized the movie over X for presenting false narratives against the Former Prime Minister Singh. He alleged the movie to be a web of lies and said that one should watch the movie if one wants to remember the ‘lies’ told about Manmohan Singh. He added, “It is not only one of the worst Hindi movies ever made but is an example of how media was used to tarnish the name of a good man”
The post of Sanghvi was reshared by filmmaker Hansal Mehta with the caption ‘+100’. This irked actor Kher who shared this remark of Mehta and called him a “Hypocrite”. He stated Singhavi to have a right to like or dislike the film but called out Mehta for his statement by highlighting Mehta’s involvement in the shoot the whole time.
He wrote, “So for him to say 100% to #VirSanghvi’s comment is so messed up and full of double standards!”. He also expressed his dissent with Singhavi’s remarks but agreed that people sometimes do bad or indifferent work and one should own it.”
He rebuked Mehta and said, “Not like #HansalMehta trying to earn some brownies from certain section of people. Common Hansal!! Grow up! I still have all our videos and pics of the shoot together!”
Sanghvi replied to this tweet by mentioning Kher to be one of the best actors who did his role to the best of his capability and what is expected from an actor. He wrote, “Nobody should blame you. It’s the people who wrote & made the film who have to answer if you played Macbeth nobody would hold you responsible for Banquo’s murder.”
Mehta reshared Kher’s post admitting that he made a mistake. He mentioned that he did his job professionally but clarified that this does not mean that he will defend the film. With regards to the brownie points as pointed out by Kher he said, “About brownie points and hypocrisy I respectfully submit that you seem to be evaluating people by the same yardstick you evaluate yourself.”
In another post, he reshared Kher’s tweet, urging Kher to call him any name he prefers and apologized to him if Kher was hurt. He politely said that he will speak to him and clear the air based on Kher’s wish. He added, “I will not give space to trolls to distort this further and have a field day at our expense. Good night, belated X’mas greetings and a happy new year in advance. To you and to all the hyperactive trolls.”
Kher also reshared some of Mehta’s earlier posts where he praised Kher, Akshaye Khanna, and Gutte Vijaye discretely for discharging their roles effectively and courteously. Kher captioned these posts with “Without Comments!”
Kher further shared two posts of Sanghvi, one where he earlier criticized PM Singh and called him as the worst PM and another which he posted on Friday calling Kher’s film to be full of lies about PM Singh. Kher captioned this with ‘No comments’.
