Kangana Ranaut responds to Apurva Asrani's allegations about 'stealing' writing credits for Simran

The Kangana Ranaut-Apurva Asrani-Hansal Mehta row over the writing credits for Simran has been unfolding over the past couple of weeks now.

Kangana Ranaut; Apurva Asrani

It's a row that has seen the end of a very fruitful partnership between Mehta and Asrani.

It has seen Asrani accuse Kangana of basically using her star power and clout to wrest an 'additional story and dialogue' credit, and Hansal Mehta himself of being 'spineless' in not standing up to her.

Meanwhile, a Sameer Gautam, who claims he was the real screenwriter for the critically acclaimed Shahid, also wrote a lengthy Facebook post on Thursday, 18 May 2017, alleging that Apurva Asrani did the same thing to him that he has now accused Kangana Ranaut.

Asrani has brushed off the allegation as a 'dirty game' on the part of Hansal Mehta.

For their detailed Facebook posts, click here.

Kangana has now responded to the row in an interview with Huffington Post.

In the interview, Kangana has said she and Hansal Mehta weren't happy with Apurva Asrani's script, and reworked it considerably while on the sets in the US.

She said that not only did she add several story angles to the script of Simran that weren't previously present, she also rewrote most of the dialogues.

Also read: Kangana Ranaut, Apurva Asrani and what the row over Simran's writing credits tells us

She further added that the fight with Apurva wasn't about him not receiving due credit (Kangana contends he has), but of taking away hers. Further, Kangana says that Hansal Mehta was under tremendous pressure during the making of Simran, because of the script on the one hand, and dealing with Apurva on the other.

Kangana says in the interview: "I am a reasonable person. I don't want to steal someone's work. But at the same time, I also don't want to feel shortchanged for the additional work I have put in. Since co-writer was not an option, I settled for additional story and additional dialogue. The basic blueprint of the film was still Apurva's and he has been duly credited for that. What else does he want, I fail to understand..."

One of the questions raised during this spat was whether or not an actor deserved credit for suggesting improvisations to a scene that well fell into his/her ambit of contributing to a film. Apurva has said that Kangana's additions to the script amount to nothing more then that.

Kangana, however, has refuted that statement. She says, "Do you really think I don't understand the distinction between giving suggestions and sitting and writing lines of dialogues? There's a fine line between giving direction to a script and actually, physically writing it. I did the latter."

Kangana also spoke at length about the growing perception that she was 'difficult to work with', was isolating herself in the industry and had become a victim of her own image. Read the full interview here.