Vivek Agnihotri: Actors have started choosing films based on filmmaker’s political inclination

For filmmaker Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, who won the National Film Award for best screenplay – dialogues for The Tashkent Files, says that casting actors for films isn’t an easy process anymore, as the decisions is no longer based on the goodness of project. In fact, a filmmaker’s political inclination is also a huge factor these days.

“There are some young actors who want to work with me, but at the same time, they are also doing some big films with some very big banners, and those directors and producers are also politically active. And they give the actors a choice between me and them. Obviously I am not making such big commercial films and those actors have stakes over there. So, actors tell me honestly tell me that ‘sir this is the problem and we won’t do it’,” shares Agnihotri.

He further adds that this is a new phenomenon, something that he has not seen or experienced before.

“Actors have started choosing films based on the other person’s political inclination. It is a very sad commentary. Never ever in the history of Indian cinema has it happened. Never before did people think about political inclination when doing a film. But now actors are blackmailed and threatened… a lot of young actors out of FTII and NSD tell me that this is the problem that if they do a film with this person, that person does not want to cast them. It is a big problem,” he adds.

Agnihotri, who is currently in the US along with wife and actor-producer Pallavi Joshi for the pre-release screenings of his latest film The Kashmir Files, says he did face it first hand while casting for his film.

“We had planned to take an actor as lead and again the same person was threatened by other producers and he told me honestly about it. I told him that it was fine. I then cast Darshan Kumar and I can say that he is fantastic in the film,” he says, while adding that he does not care about it anymore.

“I just cast good actors and there is no dearth of good actors, and they are people I believe in and I work with them,” Agnihotri says.