Anurag Kashyap says South filmmakers came to his aid when he was ready to quit Hindi films: ‘The negativity…’

Anurag said, “I reached out to Vikram on a number that he doesn’t use any more. My friend, Sobhita Dhulipal, was working on Ponniyin Selvam. I told her to tell Vikram that ‘Ek Message ka toh reply kar diya kare’. She, in turn, told Vikram that ‘Anurag has sent you a script’ and he was like ‘I never got it’. And that’s when he called me but it was seven months too late. We were neck-deep in the pre-production process and Rahul had already prepared for the role. Then he was like ‘You wrote the script for me’ and I was like ‘You didn’t reply’. And then he asked me ‘which mobile number of his I had’. Then he showed me three different numbers that were active. I told him I didn’t know how to reach out to you and I had your number from four years ago when I was trying to reach out to you.”

Anurag revealed that he and Vikram have a history dating back to the 1998 film Satya. During those days, Vikram used to dub for various notable names before his own rise to stardom with the 1999 film Sethu.

Anurag Kashyap is currently celebrating the success of his film Kennedy, which received a seven-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival this year. However, the filmmaker revealed that he once decided to quit Bollywood after facing negativity in recent years.

He said, “The negativity did get to me for some time for one or two years. But I think I was done with it by 2021. But I was really affected by it for two years. Everything was affected and I was actually thinking about somewhere else. My friends from South invited me to make films in Tamil. My friend from Kerala invited me to make films in Malayalam. I also got invitation to make German and French films. But since I don’t know the languages, how would I be able to make them in the first place? All these things happened and I thought I should move out. But then I am glad I decided to stay. And now it’s over. Now it doesn’t affect me. I don’t even have the need to justify anything. I just want to keep making films. And I’ve been writing and writing and writing.”