With Badhaai Do, Bollywood is yet again coming up with a queer love story, where Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar play the lead. This time, the theme is lavender marriage or a marriage of convenience between homosexual people. The trailer received mixed reactions from the audience, and several issues were raised about representation and queer actors not being a part of queer films, once again. Ahead of its release on February 11, we had a candid chat with director Harshavardhan Kulkarni, where we talked to him about the questions raised by the audience, and he shared his point of view with us.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
LGBTQ issues are increasingly being addressed in Bollywood films. Through Badhaai Do, what kind of issues do you aim to highlight?
I did not say yes to this film because I wanted to do an LGBTQI film. I was just waiting for some stories and then Akshat (Ghildial) and Suman (Adhikary) came to me with this concept. And I just loved it and wanted to explore more into the characters and their story. It was not because I wanted to handle an issue. As soon as you start exploring their lives, you realize the kind of discrimination and inequality they go through. And it’s not that their sexual identity is everything about them, there is so much more to them than just that. That is the bigger thing that we are exploring.
What kind of research went behind this to ensure that the representation of the community happens properly and they are not misrepresented?
Akshat and Suman were reading up a lot of things and they had done a lot of research. We had on board a script consultant from the queer community, who is a writer, so we would always fall back upon him. We did a lot of intense character-building before we started writing the script itself. After discussing these things within ourselves, we pitched it to others to see their reaction.
We were putting ourselves into their shoes and were living and reliving it. So, I think we were 99.99% accurate. Moreover, we got full marks from our consultant, Manish. We didn’t stop changing things till my final cut was finalised and ironed out a lot of things that could have led to misrepresentation, or would have been very heteronormative. So that was the bigger challenge. I don’t think misrepresentation was happening. It was more about the heteronormative way of looking at things.
But the question remains that when will queer actors play themselves in their stories.
I’ve thought about it long and hard. I think it’s a terrible discussion because when I’m casting somebody, I’m not asking them their sexual identity. If a queer person comes to me, I’m not going to tell them that you are queer so I’m not going to give you heterosexual roles. So my point is, it should be vice versa. We know of a lot of queer actors who are doing heterosexual roles. Those people don’t want to identify themselves as queer and have not come out of the closet so I can’t give out those names. Actors are supposed to be acting, right? I don’t buy this logic at all. However, if queer actors are not being considered for ANY role, then it is a problem. But the film industry is liberal and an open and accepting place.
So as a filmmaker, what do you think can change in Bollywood when it comes to telling these types of stories?
I wouldn’t want to sit on that pedestal and say this is what is going wrong or this is going right. That is a little too insensitive on my part. I am also figuring it out and trying to get to the thing of how to tell stories. I have strong opinions but not on a public platform where I can call this out.
Did you face any opposition while depicting a man in uniform (Rajkummar Rao) as a gay character?
Thankfully nobody has spoken about it. So let’s not even start this conversation again, otherwise, this will then lead to something else. Nobody has brought this up so I think we should not bring it up too. This proves that all these issues are at times created for certain advantages, by a fringe community. The larger audience is pretty much okay with anything and everything.
A cop can be queer and it is okay.
Badhaai Do, also starring Chum Darang and Seema Pahwa, is all set to hit the big screens on February 11.
