Reduced to one slap: Kiara Advani still feels 'Kabir Singh' criticism was unfair

It's been a little over a year since Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani-starrer Kabir Singh hit the theatres. The film, albeit one of the biggest Bollywood hits, was criticised for promoting 'violence' and was called out for its prolematic script. The actors and director, Sandeep Vanga, defended the film then and seems like they're defending it now, too.

According to Hindustan Times, Kiara, who played Preeti in the film, spoke about the backlash in a virtual appearance on Neha Dhupia’s chat show, No Filter Neha, and said that she was anticipating it.

She said, “I was happy when Guilty came out and Good Newwz came out and people were like okay, wow, she’s a versatile actor and you know I’ve got all the critical acclaim for. But, with Kabir, I think, it was, I was very nervous before the film release because I was aware that section of backlash would come because we saw it happen with the first film. So, we knew it would happen.”

But, the actor said, what she wasn’t prepared for the magnitude of the backlash. 

“We didn’t expect the extent of it because of course with the Hindi Film Industry, it’s a larger audience and the way the film reached out to people.” Kiara said that the film’s final scene ‘justified everything’. “For me, that scene showed her strength, she wasn’t just going to just go back to the man she loved. She decided to raise a child on her own, she left, she left him, she left the man her parents forced her to marry. I just felt she was not the woman that maybe other people saw her to be till that interval and I felt unfortunate for those people who did have the comments of misogyny and all of that which of course there is a part of the character but that’s something that was always known to the audience when you see it in the promos also.”

She added, “Unfortunately, some people just made the slap, the whole movie about one slap. It was not about one slap. That’s not something that I stand for. And, that’s not something that I would ever stand for and that’s not something Preeti stood for, either. Because she left him, she’s like no way, you have ruined whatever we’ve had this entire issue and she doesn’t go back to him and he comes finding her and even at that moment she doesn’t want to see his face but they have a confrontation and that’s what their climax scene, I think was 20 minutes long, where everything is discussed, argued and I guess, love is love at the end of the day. They both come back together.”

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