Heated words were exchanged between director Hansal Mehta and Anupam Kher on X after the death of former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. Anupam called Hansal a hypocrite for criticising The Accidental Prime Minister on which the latter served as a creative director and Anupam essayed the titular role.
Hansal re-shared a post made by journalist Vir Sanghvi, where he had called the film, ‘one of the worst Hindi movies ever made’. Responding to Hansal, Anupam wrote a long note and said, “The hypocrite in this thread is not Vir Sanghvi. He has the freedom to not like a film. But Hansal Mehta was the Creative Director of The Accidental Prime Minister, who was present at the entire shoot of the film in England! Giving his creative inputs and must have taken the fee also for it.”
He added, “So for him to say 100% to Vir Sanghvi’s comment is so messed up and full of double standards! Not that I agree with Mr. Sanghvi but we are all capable of doing bad or indifferent work. But we should own it. Not like Hansal Mehta trying to earn some brownies from certain section of people. Common Hansal! Grow up! I still have all our videos and pics of the shoot together!”
To this, Hansal responded by saying, “Of course I own my mistakes Mr Kher. And I can admit that I made a mistake. Can’t I sir? I did my job as professionally as I was allowed to. Can you deny that? But it doesn’t mean I have to keep defending the film or that it makes me lose objectivity about my error of judgement. About brownie points and hypocrisy, I respectfully submit that you seem to be evaluating people by the same yardstick you evaluate yourself.”
After a while, the director tried to ease out the moment as he said, “And by the way, Anupam Kher sir, you can say all you want. Call me names if you wish. Apologies if I have inadvertently hurt you. Sending love to you. Whenever you wish we will speak and clear the air. I will not give space to trolls to distort this further and have a field day at our expense. Good night, belated X’mas greetings and a happy new year in advance. To you and to all the hyperactive trolls.”
Further, Anupam brought back some old tweets made by Hansal from 2019, where he is seen thanking everyone who were involved with the making of the film.
The Accidental Prime Minister was a film adaptation of the book of the same name written by Sanjay Baru. Directed by Vijay Ratnakar Gutte and written by Mayank Tewari, the film released in theatres in 2019.