Actor Kangana Ranaut, in a social media video, has said that the industry treated actor Sushant Singh Rajput unfairly. Sushant was found dead at his Mumbai apartment on Sunday, at the age of 34.
In an almost two-minute long video, Kangana said that the actor didn’t get his due, despite his intelligence, a series of strong performances, and box office success. Rejecting the ‘parallel narrative’ that is being woven around Sushant’s lack of mental fortitude, Kangana said in Hindi, “How can a person who’d scored a scholarship to Stanford University be mentally weak? Why wasn’t his debut performance in Kai Po Che acknowledged?” Kangana asked. Listing his string of successful films, she continued, “Why did a terrible film like Gully Boy win all the awards when a spectacular movie like Chhichhore was ignored?”
“Why have these people not acknowledged my work, and the superhit films I’ve directed?” Kangana asked. She has so far co-directed just one film, the period epic Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi.
Kangana then steered the speech towards herself, and pointed fingers at the ‘lapdog journalists’ who’d been writing ‘blind items’ against Sushant and making him out to be an uncontrollable actor. She said that the same people who wrote about Sushant’s alleged drug use find Sanjay Dutt’s addiction ‘cute’.
Kangana said that the same people who write these ‘reports’ have been texting her, asking if she isn’t having similar thoughts. “Why are these people trying to put these ideas in my head?” Kangana demanded. “Was (Sushant’s death) a suicide or a planned murder?” she speculated. “Sushant’s only fault is that he believed them when they called him ‘worthless’. He didn’t remember what his mother told him. It is up to us now to decide who will write the history,” she concluded.
On Sunday, many members of the film community such as Akshay Kumar, Karan Johar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Anushka Sharma, Alia Bhatt, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Sushant’s former collaborators such as Sara Ali Khan, Sanjana Sanghi, Abhishek Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra and others left condolence messages for the actor.
Sushant was known for his acclaimed performances in films such as MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, Sonchiriya, Kai Po Che, and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, among others. The actor was to appear in Dil Bechara, a remake of The Fault in our Stars.
