‘Sandeep Reddy Vanga behaved obnoxiously’, Varun Grover says Anurag Kashyap ‘shielded’ Animal director, not his film

Writer-filmmaker Varun Grover spoke recently about the much-talked about photo of Animal director Sandeep Reddy Vanga and Anurag Kashyap, where the latter was seen defending Sandeep in the caption. Varun had made a comment on the post, saying, “No.” Now, in a recent interview, Varun talked more about why he said so and how Anurag called him sometime later to discuss what Varun found wrong with the post.

In an interview with Lallantop, Varun said, “I have always believed that I am never against or in support of a person. I’m always either in favor of an idea or against it. I thought in that post, Mr. Kashyap was not defending the film, but the filmmaker. There was nothing in the post about the film, but all about the filmmaker.”

Varun spoke about Sandeep’s rude behavior and said, “He is a filmmaker who, on Twitter or social media, has engaged in fights and behaved obnoxiously. If I recall correctly, he even told Javed saab that he can’t write or doesn’t have a sense of writing, and he said it very arrogantly and rudely. So, I thought, if Mr. Kashyap had defended the film in any way, it would have been fine. I would’ve never said anything. I said ‘No’ because I thought: you are shielding the filmmaker, not the film.”

After Varun’s comment on the post, Anurag called him sometime later. “So, within half an hour, he called and said, ‘Explain to me. What happened? What’s the problem here?’ So, we talked, and he agreed, he said, ‘Yeah, you’re in the right.’ Even later, I went to meet him and we’ve talked about it many times since then.”

In January last year, Anurag met Sandeep and put up some photos on Instagram. In the caption, Anurag defended the filmmaker, whose film Animal had just released and was facing criticism for its rampant misogyny. Anurag wrote in the caption, “The most misunderstood, judged and reviled filmmaker at the moment. To me he is the most honest, vulnerable and a lovely person. I wanted to meet the man and I had questions and he answered everything I asked of him about his film that I actually saw twice.”