Actress Zareen Khan made her debut opposite Salman Khan in the 2010 drama film ‘Veer’. At the beginning of her career, she was frequently compared to Katrina Kaif due to their similar looks. She later went on to appear in commercially successful films such as “Housefull 2” and “Hate Story 3.”Zareen was also offered Axar 2, a sequel to the 2006 film Axar, which originally starred Emraan Hashmi.
Dino Morea
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Udita Goswami
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Anant Mahadevan
The film initially seemed like a promising project. However, the matter later became surrounded in controversy, with Zareen claiming that she was not even invited to the premiere of her own film. Zareen recently revisited the issue in more detail during a conversation with Pooja Bhatt on the Mammoth Media Asia podcast.
Reflecting on the period following ‘Hate Story 3’, she said that many in the industry judged her harshly for doing bold scenes.
“After I did ‘Hate Story’, a lot of people looked down on me, especially in the industry. They would say, ‘Because she can’t act, she decided to strip.'”Zareen also described her first interaction with Mahadevan. According to her, the director initially pitched the project as an elegant film noir and assured her that it would not revolve around gritty scenes like those in “Hate Story 3.”
“He narrated the script in very polished English and said, ‘We are not making a hate story. We’re making a noir genre, or something like that. I thought, ‘Okay.’ “But once I got to set, every other scene ended with a kiss or suddenly required me to wear a bra or something similar.”The actress explained that she had no inherent objection to performing intimate scenes, but she felt that the project had misrepresented her from the beginning.“I have no problem doing scenes like this,” I told him, “but you gave me a completely different brief. Now, just because you’ve seen this film working, you want to add these things.” I later realized that the director was weak. He was telling one version of the story to the producers and another version to me and costume designer Shahid Aamir. According to Zareen, the disagreements between the team members intensified as the shoot progressed.“There was a lot of hostility. The producers suddenly wanted me to do a bra scene, or a kiss, or something provocative in almost every scene just because I had done such a film earlier. It’s not fair,” she said. Despite the growing tensions, she decided to complete the film because she did not want the producers to suffer financial losses. But she said the situation had deteriorated by the time the project was finished.“I’m not the type to throw tantrums. I know people’s money is at stake, so I always try to talk things out and find a compromise. But by the time the film was over, things had become so bad that I didn’t even get an invitation to screen my film,” she said. Zareen also claimed that media reports at the time unfairly portrayed her as difficult to work with.She added: “There were articles saying it was difficult to work with me. I still have letters from the director complaining to me about the producers – but what’s done is done.”
The actress further claimed that the conflict eventually divided the entire team. What started as creative differences between her and the director soon turned into bigger disputes between Mahadevan and the producers as well, which reportedly included disagreements over payments.But Mahadevan had previously denied the allegations in an interview with DNA India. “No one is more prepared than me in this industry.
People come to me for low-budget films that are clean and well-planned. I found it interesting to read about the claims of confusion, extra footage, etc. And I train like a play. Every shot was explained during rehearsals.” He also defended the intimate scenes in the film, saying they were not excessive.“Maybe Zareen is not used to this kind of shooting. As for hugging, I have repeatedly said that a few kisses do not make a film exciting.
These days every other film has kisses, even Karan Johar’s film has such kisses. There was nothing vulgar in my film. We actually shot longer kisses, but we didn’t want it to get an “A” certificate because we wanted women to see the movie so we edited it out. Even the film is driven by Zareen’s character.
She went through the entire filming and dubbing sessions and was very happy with the results. If there was something to that effect, it would have come out then. She even happily admitted in interviews that she’s excitedly looking forward to the female-oriented film! “I don’t know if she was instigated, but everything she says doesn’t hold up.”
