Hunkkaar creators Karan D Kapadia, Nitya Mehra laugh at being called Aneet Padda's parents: 'She is not our nepo baby'
Here's the latest update from the Bollywood world:
Even though it was shot in 2024, the JioHotstar show Hunkkaar is releasing now, two years later. For most actors, life has progressed since then. But for Aneet Padda , it has transformed. In between, she had her Bollywood breakthrough with Saiyaara and became an overnight star. Hunkkaar creators Karan D Kapadia and Nitya Mehra have seen Aneet’s journey from the beginning, having worked with her on two projects before. In a conversation with Hindustan Times, the two filmmakers talk about her growth as an star and the time she was branded a ‘nepo baby’ by the internet.
Adding to this, Aneet Padda with Nitya Mehra and Karan D Kapadia at the trailer launch of Hunkkaar. (Twitter) Karan and Nitya on Aneet in Hunkkaar Aneet worked with Karan and Nitya on a short movie before joining their acclaimed web series, Big Girls Don’t Cry. The filmmakers say that this created a comfort zone for them with the star. Nitya tells us why she was chosen for Hunkkaar, “We had done a short movie with her when she was out of school, then Big Girls Don't Cry, and this was the next project. We, as filmmakers, and she, as a movie child, were growing together. She is a chameleon. That's why Hunkkaar is so interesting, to see Aneet's journey on it. She had that childlike quality needed for the character to be the face of the fight. And as you shared about changing the narrative from victim to survivor, we never wanted to use the term victim. You needed someone who could pull off being vulnerable while having an entire nation behind her.”
Meanwhile, Karan adds that even though they auditioned many other girls, the character was written with Aneet in mind. “After Big Girls Don't Cry , it was always going to be her. When we wrote the character, it was this person. We auditioned a lot of girls, but I was convinced she'd play the vulnerability of a person who's gone through this, yet have the maturity to understand what took place, and the fight, fire, and hunkkaar [inner roar] within her to take on this battle, speak her truth to power, and not go quietly into the night. So it was a no-brainer,” he tells us.
Notably, Aneet feels the same affection and admiration for the filmmaker couple that they do for her. In an interview with Cosmopolitan India last year, she referred to them as her ‘Bombay parents’, implying that they were her guardians in the city, where she lived away from family. But that term created some confusion, and soon, the internet was convinced that Aneet was their daughter. Reddit posts branded her a ‘nepo baby’, downplaying her success in Saiyaara. Karan laughs, recalling the episode. “First of all, I'm damn young, so it's impossible I could be her biological parent,” says the father of a six-year-old. Nitya chimes in, tongue firmly in cheek, “Karan was in depression! He was like, ‘How can the world think I have a 20- or 21-year-old daughter?!’ So he was going through his crisis on that.”
As per the latest buzz, Karan feels that the entire misunderstanding is symptomatic of how society likes to bring people down after early success. He says, “As a society, we try to bring people down and take credit away: 'Oh, she's a nepo baby, she's got backing.' For Nitya and me, it's very important to state that anyone standing where they are today is there on the merit of their hard work. No one can take that away.” Nitya adds that it doesn’t matter what the world thinks about their equation, though. “Whether she calls me a Bombay parent or whatever, I'm just damn proud of her.”
In further updates, Hunkkaar: The Roar also stars Fatima Sana Shaikh, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayub, Raghubir Yadav, and Zoya Hussain. The series focuses on a schoolgirl’s allegation of sexual harassment against a revered self-proclaimed godman and the investigation into it. The show will rollout on JioHotstar on September 25.
On top of that, Abhimanyu Mathur is Deputy Editor, Entertainment at Hindustan Times. With almost 15 years of experience in writing about everything from films and TV shows to cricket matches and elections, he inhales and exhales pop culture and news. Currently, he watches movies and TV shows and talks to celebrities for a living, while occasionally writing about them as well. A journalism graduate of Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, Delhi University, Abhimanyu began his career with Hindustan Times at the age of 20, swapping classrooms for newsrooms at an early age. He began his journey in the early days of digital journalism, later switching to the madness of print journalism. Work has led him to far off places like Japan and Jordan, as well as to the interiors of Haryana and the Indo-Pak border. He dabbled in city reporting in places like Meerut, Gurgaon, and Delhi, covered the Olympics and Cricket World Cups, before finding his calling in entertainment and lifestyle during the pandemic. A Rotten Tomatoes Certified Movie Critic, he is equally at home covering stories on ground as he is interviewing celebrities and studios, and sometimes prefers to shepherd teams in delivering traffic through the day. Even as his role has evolved from reporter to supervisor over the years, his first love remains writing (and of late, talking on camera). With a good understanding of cinema and its trends, and a keen eye for detail, he continues to spark conversations around showbiz for readers around the world. Read More
Source: Hindustan Times