After Sushant’s death, I turned to understand what happened — and that was when I realised my perceptions were also wrong, what he had actually gone through, and I was overcome with guilt and shame: Kangana Ranaut explains why she is so vocal about seeking #JusticeForSushantSinghRajput
Anshul Chaturvedi (BOMBAY TIMES; July 24, 2020)

When you first heard the news that Sushant Singh Rajput has died, what were your thoughts?
I have to admit that I was not following Sushant and his career. I don’t follow anybody. But my first reaction was shock, sheer disbelief. To me, he was (at that point) just another star, very promising and very talented. I would admit that at first, it looked like an impulsive thing that he might have done. I thought maybe because everyone is locked down, and this is a very unusual situation, so maybe that got to him? I was not thinking about all the layers.

Sushant and I, we never really crossed paths. But we were always really close, you know. For example, when he was new, we had a common friend called Sandip Ssingh. He even came to one of my birthdays I think, my 25th birthday, with Ankita Lokhande. I remember speaking to Ankita that night and not him. Later, I knew that he was doing Ram-Leela, and then he did not do it. I used to get all the updates. Kamal Jain, who was the producer of Manikarnika, worked with Sushant in the Dhoni film also. Every now and then, he used to talk about Sushant. When I was learning horse riding, he used to say that he organised the training for Sushant also. He used to wake up at 4am and finish the training at 6am. Once at Kamal ji’s office, I had reached and Sushant had just left. There was some kind of connection, but nothing direct.

(After his death) I called Kamal ji, and I spoke to him. And Ankita being a dear friend, I spoke to Ankita. I spoke to Sandip. Because that’s what you do, right? You try and understand what just happened.

Kamal ji told me that Sushant spoke to him days ago and said, ‘Make a big film with me. Kamal ji, you have to announce a big film with me. Everybody has banned me.’ That’s what he said to Kamal Jain. From there, I was very curious about this situation.

And then I understood his personality. I asked Kamal ji, how he was, I asked those regular questions — was he into drugs or a sex maniac as people had portrayed him? I had read blinds about him that he is having sex with anything that moves. And Kamal ji was like, ‘What rubbish! He was a genius, no drugs, he was very health conscious’ and all of that. And one thing he said — that he was very ambitious. But he wasn’t thick-skinned. If you are ambitious and thin-skinned, how is that gonna work?

When I spoke to Ankita, she said right from the beginning, there was so much humiliation that he could not take it. This is how she summed it up. She said that I knew this boy since he was working in serials, he became a top actor there, and then he did auditions after auditions, rejections after rejections, and then he got into the big bad world of Bollywood. (Then) every filmmaker wanted this boy from Bihar, they were fighting for his dates and he was so grounded. But one thing that she also said about him was that he was not thick-skinned. He would sit on Twitter when he was new and would fight with fans, asking ‘Why did you think that about me? Why did you say that about me? I am not this person that you are saying.’ Ankita told me that she used to tell him ki abhi ye toh hoga na. Everybody will have their perception of you, why are you so bothered about it? He just could not take that, he could not take what people thought about him. She said, over a period, the bad PR, the ganging up, the public humiliation, he just could not take it. He has had enough — that’s what she said.

I want to be very honest. I can’t say that Sushant came and told me all this but I gathered my perception of him and I understood that he was trapped, jaise Abhimanyu ko chakravyuh mein ghera jata hai. And a few personality traits of him did not work for him, one of which he mentioned, that he cannot express himself.

I spoke to Abhishek Kapoor ji and he said, ‘Kangana, woh shaheed ho gaya.’ I am quoting these people because I cannot tell you the whole conversations, but everyone summed it up in their own way. Abhishek in his interviews said that he was not the same boy from Kai Po Che by the time of Kedarnath. He had changed. Woh ghut gaya tha, he said, he had changed, they had choked him way before he actually choked himself.

At what point of time did it come to your mind, after absorbing all of this, that you need to speak about and talk about his case in the public space, in the manner you have been doing?
See, I don’t want to be standing on some high ground and be like, I always knew Sushant. No, I did not. And to be honest, when I would read these blinds after blinds, news after news that he is a rapist, he is a sex addict, he is doing drugs, he is beating up his directors, I remember thinking vaguely, ‘What is up with this boy? He needs to get control of his life.’ That was my perception of Sushant — but when I actually went deeper into the matter, I was taken over by an unbearable amount of guilt and shame. The kind of trap that they laid for him and the prejudice of an outsider, I saw it from (the perspective of) an outsider, who has been called a witch, a whore, what not. When I actually got to know about him, I was taken over by a strong sense of guilt and shame. And I recorded my first video, and I was shaking. I remember I was on the verge of crying because everything was clear to me that what had happened and honestly, it was just spontaneous.

How do you respond to the charge, frequently raised this week, that you are using Sushant to fight your personal battles and target people in the industry whom you are not on good terms with?
Someone like me, who has said no to Yash Raj Films, to Khans’ films, to Bhansali films, to big brands that have fairness attached to them — I could have done a lot for promotions. An actor gets more noticed for wearing a fancy dress than for acting in a film. The kind of media culture that we have here and internationally, it is influenced by the Kardashians. You don’t need somebody’s death to promote yourself. People can just do a TikTok video and have 10M followers. I can do Instagram or Twitter if I want to. I can do so much to promote myself.

About taking revenge from my enemies — I have always been vocal about that from Day One. I don’t need to ride on someone’s shoulders to take revenge.

Nobody has the right to tell me that you stop talking about your enemies because we will only talk about Sushant. Yes, it is about Sushant, but it is also about my life, because these people are still ganging up on me. I will talk about my enemies because maybe, we have lost Sushant, but there is still hope for my life. I will talk about it! You can’t tell me that now you shut up because you are still alive.

So for people to say that I am taking revenge from my enemies, of course, I am! Is there any doubt about it? One does not have to be a genius to figure that out. I want to live, I want to survive, I want to make it big. I won’t let people trap me, ruin me. I will do everything to fight them. So, I think it is a very lame argument to say that you should not be talking about your enemies.

The people who you often refer to as the power centres — none of them have engaged with your charges. On the other hand, we’ve been seeing a sort of a sharp, public digital spat between you and many who, themselves, are also ‘outsiders’. Why is that happening?
They are not gonna dirty their hands. None of them are addressing what I spoke about. Right now, if they talk, they will be trolled. So, who do they send? These outsiders. So they know which lives are valuable for them and which are not.

If I am talking about some points about how he was killed, you talk about those points na. Why are you talking about what I said ten years ago? Yaar, ten years ago my issues were different. Ten years ago, I did not know English, I was a skinny, frizzy-haired, scrawny-looking girl. People mocked me, made fun of me, but nobody was threatened by me. Forget my ten-year-old videos, yaar. Let’s talk about Sushant Singh’s murder!

So they are coming and saying that ten years ago you were saying this, of course, they are gonna get trolled. Of course, they are gonna lose their reputation. But they will not send their own talent to do that. These people are only turning outsider against outsider, because they don’t want to dirty their own hands. I had put such big charges on them, why are they not coming out in public and talking?

What does ‘B-grade actor’ mean?
(Pause) People like us, when we come from outside, we are enamoured by them. And that’s what even Ankita told me about Sushant. He wanted to be accepted. She said, “Kangana, Sushant was exactly like you… he was very intellectual, he would not gossip about anyone, and was very invested in what he did. He had that small-town personality.” But she said that “the only difference was that he wanted to be accepted. You somehow have gotten over that urge.”

It is true that in the beginning, even I wanted to. I went through that phase where I straightened my hair, I stuffed my lips with botox, I started to do films like Rascals, I wore a bikini — I wanted to be desperately accepted. I went through that. I wanted to be on the cover pages of magazines. I wanted to win awards. But it is not going to help. I was still B-grade and they did not accept me.

So I want them to know. When Swara Bhasker says that ‘I’m Sonam Kapoor’s best friend’, that’s not how the world perceives her. No! No matter how much Taapsee Pannu says that everybody loves her, and she has gotten equal opportunities, no! People do not perceive her as somebody who is an equal to an Alia Bhatt or Ananya Panday. No! So that’s what I try to convey — that no matter how much you try and fit in, you are not fitting in. If you are not seeing it, let me show you — in their world, you are still B-grade. I have been through those galis, I know where it goes! So that’s what I try to convey to them. If you think you are fitting in and now you have also become insiders, no, you’re not.
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In 2017, you and Sushant were being considered for a movie by Homi Adajania?
Yeah. I still remember that day when Homi called me to his office. I was about to step out and I was given the legal notice that Hrithik Roshan had sent me about criminal charges. In a dazed state, I went to Homi, and he narrated me a love story and I could not just focus on it because I was so shattered. I told him I would revisit it, but nobody knew my state of mind. After that, for one year, the kind of filth that I faced, the kind of butchering that I faced, I didn’t sign any film that year, but I vaguely remember that story. It was a love story about an urban couple.

When this whole thing happened, it occurred to me that if I had done that film, would our lives have been different now? I don’t know. I just don’t know. It is so unfortunate at so many levels. Would I be his friend and would I have given him a perspective for not longing for acceptance? I don’t know what I would do on finding such an amazing person.

That was so unfortunate and this makes me feel so bad. Had I done that film, what would our lives be, I don’t know. I can only think about it.