Sanjay Leela Bhansali talks about making a historical film in India

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Sanjay Leela Bhansali produced the historical romance Padmaavat before directing Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022). Based on a poem written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi in the sixteenth century. It starred Deepika Padukone as Queen Padmavati, Ranveer Singh as Alauddin Khilji, and Shahid Kapoor as Rajput ruler Ratan Singh.

The cast also included Anupriya Goenka, Jim Sarbh, Raza Murad, and Aditi Rao Hydari. The Hindi feature film encountered various objections while it was being made and up to its release, and it also underwent some revisions before it was released in theatres.

After then, Sanjay switched to historical dramas that incorporate parts from actual events. But after making Padmaavat, the director has learned to be more cautious. Because they believed that the movie painted the Rajput queen in a negative light, members of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena organized protests and even vandalized the Padmaavat sets.

Death threats were also addressed to actors Deepika and Sanjay, both of whom had been beaten on the movie set. Also, there were objections to the way Ranveer’s character Alauddin Khilji was portrayed.

Sanjay revealed his upcoming project, the online series Heeramandi, at a panel discussion, “When you’re making a historical in our country, you need to be careful. So yes, you need to get your facts right. And that is where my research ends because most of it is imagination, most of it is how I see the period. It’s done but it’s not done so detail because I find research very boring. I, as a filmmaker, am not set out to make a documentary that I want it to be exact.”

For the Heeramandi announcement, Ted Sarandos, CEO of Netflix, was with Sanjay. With Heeramandi, the filmmaker, who is making his digital debut, acknowledged that this was the largest production he had ever worked on. Then he said, “It’s so huge in scale. I had to do something special… [Sarandos] had commissioned this to me and therefore we had to do something special to make him proud.”

Later this year, the filmmaker’s newest feature will make its Netflix debut. Sonakshi Sinha, Manisha Koirala, Richa Chadha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Sanjeeda Shaikh, and Sharmin Segal all appear in the eight-episode series. The Lahore-based drama series explores the private lives of bygone era’s courtesans.

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