Anupam Kher, A Vocal Congress Critic, Says The Role Of Manmohan Singh Has Been His Career’s Toughest
The Accidental Prime Minister, which hits some 1,800 screens across India on January 11, has been making headlines since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unofficially endorsed the film by sharing the trailer on the party’s Twitter handle. But long before that, the casting of Anupam Kher as Manmohan Singh, prime minister during the UPA regime (2004-2014), raised eyebrows, given Kher’s support for the BJP and the background of the film’s director, Vijay Gutte. Gutte’s father, Ratnakar Gutte, contested and lost the 2014 Maharashtra assembly election as a member of the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, part of the BJP-led alliance in the state. Based on Sanjaya Baru’s eponymous book about his years as media advisor to Singh when he was PM, the film is being promoted with a disclaimer: the “characters have been fictionalised for dramatisation”. In an e-mail interview, Kher spoke with India today about how he approached the role. Edited excerpts:
Q. How hard was it to play Manmohan Singh?
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