Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti are gearing up for the discharge of their upcoming movie The Archies. The movie marks the debut of Shah Rukh Khan‘s daughter Suhana Khan, Amitabh Bachchan’s grandson Agastya Nanda and Boney Kapoor’s daughter Khushi Kapoor. The casting of the movie rekindled the controversy round nepotism in Bollywood. The movie additionally stars Vedang Raina, Dot, Mihir Ahuja and Yuvraj Menda.
Speaking to Film Companion, Zoya and Reema addressed this debate. Zoya mentioned, “What I find fascinating is that there were seven kids on the poster. Netflix and Tiger Baby put seven kids on the poster and the media only spoke about three, and then turns around and tells us about nepotism. I mean, you’re the one not giving the other four attention.”
“You robbed their moment. To me, that’s just heartbreaking to see. Who are you talking to? To us? We’ve put seven kids out there, you’ve ignored four. You took away their moment so, sorry, your problem,” Zoya mentioned.
Reema added, “I’ve had a lot of people come up and say that you’ve cast these three star kids, I was like, ‘There were seven kids in the trailer, do you remember the names of the other four? Did you even look at them?’ We are very excited about them, they’re all outstanding. What happened was actually quite sad for the other four and for the three.”
The video has blown up on Reddit. One particular person wrote, “So why is Amitabh’s grandson cast as the main lead?? Why not Vedang or Mihir?? In that second song, the camera is totally on him and then a bit on Suhana and Khushi and the rest are side characters.” Another added, “Even in the trailer, the focus is only on the 3. They have the most dialogues of all the cast.”
One particular person wrote, “If they had cast Agastya as Reggie and Vedang as Archie her saying this would make a little more sense.” Another added, “You couldn’t even give a non-nepo kid ONE main character across Archie, Betty, and Veronica?” One particular person wrote, “Nobody took away their moment. You knew the aftermath of this… so don’t blame the audience.”
The Archies releases on December 7 on Netflix.
