Kangana Ranaut is known to don many hats. She was a dialogue writer on the critically acclaimed film, Queen (2014) and co-wrote filmmaker Hansal Mehta’s Simran (2017). In 2019, Kangana Ranaut took on the role of a director on Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi after director Krish Jagarlamudi stepped down from it. And now, she is marking her debut as a producer with the comedy-drama Tiku Weds Sheru under her banner, Manikarnika Films.
For the unversed, the film follows the journey of two eccentric and starry-eyed characters – a dreamer and a hustler. The trailer showcases the ups and downs in the lives of this unconventional couple, a junior artist and an aspiring actor, who begin their mad-cap journey as they hustle together to achieve their ambitions in the city of dreams, Mumbai.
At the trailer launch event of the film in Mumbai today (June 14), Kangana said that there’s no other project she could have made her production debut with. Born in a small town in Himachal Pradesh, she ran away from home at 15 and thus began, her struggle to become an actor in Bollywood. Though she managed to make a name for herself in the film industry, Kangana often thinks about what happened to all those who couldn’t achieve their dreams.
She pointed out that many films have been made on people and their success stories but she wonders what happened to those on the other side of the tracks. “Only an achiever’s film makes it to celluloid. Woh Lamhe (2006) and The Dirty Picture (2011), for instance. But there are lakhs and lakhs of people coming to Mumbai every day with a dream. Where do these people go? What happens to them? Some of them run away from their homes. I was in a kind of situation where I had shut all the doors behind me. There was no going back for me. What happens to people like me? This thought often occur to me,” she elaborated.
She also recalled the times when she had face a plethora of rejections and how it was one positive nod from her Gangster (2006) director that turned the tables for her. “This was just one incident that happened in my life. Every day I would get rejected while auditioning. One selection changed my life when Anurag Basu had approved of me. Had that not happened, what would my life be? Where would I end up? These things played in my mind over and over again,” she said.
The story of Tiku Weds Sheru strongly resonated with Kangana and she knew that it was a story she needed and wanted to back. “I always say that an examination happens only for one day. You might be a great student throughout the rest of the year and even if you don’t do well on that one day, the result that comes out becomes the result of your life. That’s why Tiku Weds Sheru felt very personal to me. It’s easy to say that I could have made any other film, but what would I make?” she shared.
Having started her career at a very early age and facing rejection through her struggles made her put her trust and confidence in Tiku Weds Sheru. “If you come to think of it, I was driven by passion from the age of 15. I had not written love letters like other girls of my age because I was already on a film set by then. I was pursuing a career during my teenage years. Life was mostly full of struggles and a few successes. There’s no other story that I could tell because I don’t know anything else,” Kangana added.
Tiku Weds Sheru is directed by Sai Kabir Srivastav and stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Avneet Kaur. It is all set to start streaming on Amazon Prime Video from June 23.
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