02022023-LSTL-01.qxd 2/1/2023 10:46 PM Page 1 c m y b TRIBUNE Anurag Kashyap shares how he was once kicked out of the house by his wife for being an alcoholic Star power Prime Video on Wednesday announced that Samantha Ruth Prabhu would be starring alongside Varun Dhawan in the Indian leg of the Citadel universe. LUDHIANA | THURSDAY | 2 FEBRUARY 2023 Coping well Mona Days of struggle Anurag Kashyap is currently gearing up for the release of Almost Pyaar With DJ Mohabbat, which hits the cinemas this Friday (February 3). The film stars Alaya F and Karan Mehta in the lead roles, along with Vicky Kaushal in an interesting cameo. During an interaction, Anurag opened up about his life. He talked about his first marriage and in the same breath, also recalled the bad memories like when his ex-wife Aarti Bajaj threw him out of the house for being an alcoholic! I was The filmmaker said, “I used to unceremoniously lock myself in a room, and that’s when the drinking began. I used thrown out of projects I to drink heavily for a year-and-ahad written. That was a half. Aarti kicked me out of the very bad phase and it house. My daughter Aaliya was accumulated into only four years old then. That was anger. a difficult phase. I was depressed.” Anurag also opened up about his strugTABU gling days. The filmmaker recalled how despite getting fame after writing Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya, his directorial ventures often ended up in trouble. He added, “Paanch was stalled, Black Friday was stalled, Allwyn Kalicharan was shelved, another film that nobody knows was shelved, I was kicked out of Tere Naam and Kaante. I was drinking and fighting all these battles. I was unceremoniously thrown out of projects I had written. That was a very bad phase and it accumulated into anger, with the industry, with the system.” Kashyap also opened up on how there was a time when he was reduced to sleeping on the footpath! He said, “At that time there was a garden in the middle of Juhu circle, which used to be a roundabout without any signal. We used to sleep there, but sometimes they would drive us out. Then we went to Versova Link Road, where there was a wider footpath. People used to sleep there in a line. But you had to pay six rupees to sleep there, which I gave.” — TMS T ABU left a mark with the role of a grieving mother-cum-cop in Drishyam and its sequel; she donned the khaki in Kuttey again, demanding and commanding attention. Interestingly, this role was originally written for a male cop but was altered to facilitate her joining Aasmaan Bhardwaj’s directorial debut. Controlled, brutal and raw, trust her to bring out different shades with each new outing. Bholaa sees her turn a policewali again, and at the trailer launch, she said, “Despite essaying a police officer in many films, I have been able to bring out different shades of those characters. In Bholaa, it’s a totally different once more.” SHEFALI SHAH RAVEENA TANDON Playing the role of a police officer on screen comes with its own set of challenges. Here’s a look at some actresses who have donned the uniform with élan Interestingly, she played a cop in three more films — ACP Kiran Patekar in Kohram, ACP Gayathri Varma in Rakkilippattu (Malayalam) and ACP Gayatri in Snegithiye (Tamil). As we await her next cop avatar in March with Bholaa, where Ajay Devgn plays the titular role, we look at actresses who donned the uniform on screen with élan. THRICE THE JOY Priyanka Chopra impressed as FBI agent Alex Parrish in Quantico, but even before that she had turned cop in Bollywood. Undercover cop Roma, she impressed in Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Don, while reprising the role again in its sequel. Gunday saw Priyanka as an undercover inspector Nandita Sengupta, who plays the love interest of Bala and Bikram, roles essayed by Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh, respectively. Her third outing as a cop finally NEHA DHUPIA RANI MUKERJI Coming soon… PRIYANKA CHOPRA From playing a rather demure Rajjo Shreshawat, wife of Dabangg cop Chulbul Pandey, Sonakhi Sinha is all set to take the OTT world by storm with her cop act in Dahaad. Playing sub-inspector Anjali Bhaati, the upcoming web series, created by Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar, looks promising. Rohit Shetty’s Indian Police Force marks not just Sidharth Malhotra’s OTT debut but also presents the sultry Shilpa Shetty in a cop’s role. “Welcome to the squad Shilpa! Get ready for gun battles, hand-tohand combat, high speed chases and, yes, flying cars…Indian police ....” posted Rohit Shetty, who debuts in OTT space with this eight-part series. SHILPA SHETTY had her don the uniform as Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Abha Mathur in Jai Gangaajal. PACKING A PUNCH Mardaani saw the queen of hearts Rani Mukerji play a tough crime branch officer Shivani Shivaji Roy, who is out to bust a child-trafficking racket. Her punches, both physical and verbal, impressed her fans. She reprised her act in Mardaani 2, in this outing nabbing a serial killer through a series of cat and mouse chases, while making a mark in uniform yet again. REAL & RELATABLE A tender mother and a tough cop is a heady combination, which one saw in Delhi Crimewhere seasoned actress Shefali Shah enacted the role of DCP Vartika Chaturvedi. This International Emmy winning show gave Shah’s career a big boost. The DCP of Delhi Crime was raw, real and relatable. BRAVE ACT Neha Dhupia’s role, ACP Catherine Alvarez, in A Thursday might not have been etched powerfully, but that she played a pregnant cop, not letting her Family drama Following the success of her South Indian film debut with Sita Ramam, which became one of the most critically appreciated Telugu films of 2022, Mrunal Thakur will now be seen starring opposite one of Telugu cinemas Mrunal Thakur and Nani commence shoot of Telugu film physical condition come in way of work, was acknowledged. That she played the part when eight months pregnant was brave too! Raveena Tandon in the web series Aranyak played a cop really well. If Rohit Shetty is filling his cop universe with swashbuckling men, lately we see a lot more women cops hogging limelight, especially on OTT. Sargun Mehta in Cuttputlli, Prachi Desai in Silence... Can You Hear It?, Huma Qureshi in D Day to Yami Gautam in Dasvi, there have been some fine performances. youngest stars, Nani, in her next venture. The film is an emotional family drama directed by Shouryuv. The mahurat shot was taken in Hyderabad on January 31. Mrunal says, “I’m excited to be part of this project. It’s a really heartwarming story and the team backing the project is immensely talented. I’m looking forward to working with Nani. It’s an interesting curve, given I did the remake of Jersey last year, a film Nani originally starred in.” — TMS Happy He’s facing the heat times Alec Baldwin charged with involuntary manslaughter Director Atlee and wife Krishna Priya welcome a baby boy VARUN DHAWAN AND JANHVI KAPOOR Bawaal release date postponed Filmmaker Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming film Bawaal has been postponed. Janhvi Kapoor and Varun Dhawan will be sharing screen space for the first time in this film. While earlier the film’s release date was declared as April 7, now it has been postponed for an indefinite period of time. The film was officially announced last year in April. It has been shot across various locations, including Paris, Berlin, Poland, Amsterdam, Krakow and Warsaw, along with a brief portion in India as well. Nitesh says, “The visual finesse we want to achieve on these sequences will need more time than we expected. We don’t want to cut short anything because our purpose is to bring nothing but the best version of our vision to our viewers.” Bawaal is produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. It marks the directorproducer’s reunion after the National Award-winning film Chhichhore. — TMS Film director Atlee Kumar was blessed with a baby boy with actress-wife Krishna Priya on January 31. It's their first child and they shared the news on their respective Instagram handles. In his post, Atlee wrote, "There's no feeling in the world like this and just like that our baby boy is here... Happy. Blessed." — TMS Hollywood star Alec Baldwin and armourer Hanna Gutierrez-Reed have officially been charged in the Rust fatal shooting case. The 30 Rock alum and Hanna have been hit with one count of involuntary manslaughter, following the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary CarmackAltwies filed charges against the actor and the film’s armourer on January 31. This arrived after 15 months of speculation about whether she would find evidence to take the case to trial. “On the day of the shooting alone, evidence shows that no less than a dozen acts, omissions and recklessness, occurred in the short time before lunch and the time of the shooting, and this does not include the reckless handling of the firearm by Baldwin,” so read a probable cause statement c m y b accompanying the charges. If convicted, Alec and Hanna could each face a fiveyear prison sentence. Alec previously insisted that he did not pull the trigger when Halyna was shot back in 2021, but the FBI tested the weapon and later issued a report that concluded that it would not have gone off if someone had not pulled the trigger. Halyna’s death was initially ruled as an accident, but her family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Alec and others involved in the production of Rust. The lawsuit was settled last October and it was agreed that filming would resume, with the cinematographer’s widower, Matthew Hutchins, on board as an executive producer. Matthew has said that he has ‘no interest’ in apportioning blame for his wife’s death and wants to pay tribute to her ‘final work’. —IANS What a feat! It has been seven days since Shah Rukh Khan’s film Pathaan was released and the action entertainer has raked in Rs 634 crore gross worldwide (since January 25)! Pathaan, on its seventh day, registered Rs 23 crore net in India (Hindi: Rs 22 crore, all dubbed versions: Rs 1 crore), taking the India gross figure to Rs 28 crore. The overseas gross on day seven is at Rs. 15 crore. In seven days, Pathaan has recorded $29.27 million (Rs 238.5 crore) in the overseas territories alone, while net collection in India stands at Rs 330.25 (Hindi: Rs 318.50 crore, dubbed: Rs 11.75 crore). — IANS Pathaan collects a historic ~634 crore gross worldwide in seven days