Kiara Advani thinks 'Kabir Singh' criticism wasn't fair

The actor says her and Shahid Kapoor were 'well aware of what they were getting themselves into'

It's been a year since Shahid Kapoor-Kiara Advani starrer Kabir Singh hit the theatres that sent shockwaves through Bollywood.

While touting to be one of the biggest releases of 2019, the Arjun Reddy remake was problematic - to say the least. Shahid, however, had a difference of opinion on the matter. And apparently, so does the female lead of the film.

In an interview with Indian journalist Anupama Chopra, Kiara spoke about the criticism Sandeep Vanga's directorial faced and how she felt it was unfair.


The actor was also asked if she’d approach things differently if presented with a film like Kabir Singh now when she has more power to choose her scripts.

“Both Shahid and myself were well aware of the film (we were getting into), and everything that we knew would come with it,” Kiara said since they could draw from the original Telugu movie Arjun Reddy, on which Kabir Singh was based.

The actor said that no character she has ever played has been like her at all. “And Kabir Singh was probably the hardest of them all because anyone who knows me knows my thinking,” she said, adding that the film “was so real and so flawed.”

PHOTO: SHAHID KAPOOR/INSTAGRAM

She continued, “So much was made out of it, and so much backlash happened, it was so exhausting,” she said, adding that “anything I do today, Preeti does not leave me.” She said that as an artist, “the director had his perspective, we had ours, and the audience theirs and that was divided, but I feel you can’t disrespect the intelligence of the audience.”

Kiara said that “one some level, there were things that were raised in the debate (around the film) that were actually healthy. "Somewhere we get really hard on certain films, and I don’t know if it was that fair to be that hard on this film.”

Suggesting on how the film could have been made better, Kiara commented, “Sometimes I wonder had you seen Preeti’s life when she goes missing in the second half, maybe there would have been some sort of justification. Maybe had the audience seen what she went through when the separation happened would they have been so hard?"

Have something to add to the story? Share it in the comments below.