Recently, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap had expressed his feelings about working with actor Abhay Deol. He said it was extremely difficult to work with Abhay during Dev D.

If you aren't aware, allow us to educate you, Abhay came up with the idea and certain vision to recreate the classic Bengali novel Devdas written by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The ZNMD actor approached several directors, but his version of Devdas was rejected as many thought it was too dark. However, Anurag Kashyap decided to helm the modern version of Devdas.

Abhay Deol took to his Instagram handle to share his part of his story and answered, Why Anurag Kashyap thought it was difficult to work with him?

Abhay said after reading the novel, he felt the need to redefine the female character as a strong independent woman. He started with, “Dev.D” released in 2009. I spent a year narrating the idea to several people before I got Anurag on board to direct it. I remember people’s reaction upon hearing my narration, it was always, “it’s too much of an art-film”. Lucky for me Anurag got it.

I had read the book and I could see that the character was a chauvinist, a misogynist, entitled, and arrogant. Yet he had been romanticized for decades! The women, on the other hand, were strong and had integrity, but there was still that expectation for them to love their man no matter what. I wanted to change that. I wanted to empower them, shed the image of the “good, devoted, woman”. It was time to make them independent, not defined by the man they love, or by men in general. Which is why Paro calls out Dev’s faults and puts him in his place.

In my version, Dev gets shot by the police (he becomes a drug dealer) outside Paro’s house and dies just like in the book. Chanda does not fall in love with him, and neither is she ashamed of being an East European high-class escort (again, in my version). She’s the strongest character of the 3, and isn’t afraid of being judged. She does empathize with Dev, seeing how broken he is, and I went with the “prostitute with the heart of gold” theme from the book. 

He added, Anurag felt a happy ending would make the film more accepted by the audience, and his twist was to have Dev & Chanda fall in love. My vision was too dark! I went with the flow and even brought my buddies @twilightplayers to feature in it.

He further added, the rest is history #makingwhatbollywouldnt.

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