One of the most admirable qualities about Zoya Akhtar as a personality besides being a celebrated filmmaker, is her unflinching ability to call a spade, a spade.
As she gears up for the much-awaited release of the Indian adaptation of Archies featuring seven promising new faces, which streams on Netflix from December 7, the filmmaker opened up about why the media chooses to highlight only three star kids amongst the star cast and then choose to accuse the filmmaker of casting talents based on their famous surnames.
In a recent interview with Film Companion, Akhtar took an opportunity to remind the media how they conveniently single out star kids and lay emphasis on them while ignoring the other actors who have been cast basis on their talent.
She said, “What I find fascinating is there were seven kids on that poster and the media only spoke about three (Suhana, Agastya, and Khushi). And then turns around and tells us about nepotism. Actually, you're the one not giving the other four attention. You robbed their moment and it's heartbreaking to see. We've put seven kids out there. You've just ignored four. And you took away their moment. So sorry. Your problem.”
The film stars Suhana Khan, Khushi Kapoor, Agastya Nanda, Yuvraj Menda, Mihir Ahuja, Vedang Raina and Aditi Saigal who goes by the name Dot.
Adding further to Zoya's views, her co-writer and frequent collaborator Reema Kagti also added, “Do you know the other four’s names? Did you bother to look at them?’ Because we are very excited about them. What happened actually was quite sad for the other four, and for the three.”
ABOUT ARCHIES
Archies is Zoya's hat-tip to the iconic novel adapted in 1960's Riverdale in India. While Agastya plays the titular role as Archies, Suhana plays Veronica and Khushi plays Betty. While Dot. plays Ethel, Mihir plays Jughead, Yuvraj is Dilton and Vedang is Reggie.
