'It's easy to call anything problematic': Richa Chadha on outrage against Madam Chief Minister, Section 375
'You have to leave enough room for all kinds of films to be made. We'll never have a contrarian point of view if such films aren't made,' says Richa Chadha.
Tatsam Mukherjee
January 22, 2021 08:09:44 IST
It's a Sunday noon, and I'm first in line for a long day of interviews around Richa Chadha's latest film,
Madam Chief Minister, but she already sounds exhausted. Playing a Dalit woman in the film (reportedly inspired by the life of Mayawati), Chadha was criticised for the film's poster showing her holding a broom. When I eventually broach the topic during the phone interview, Chadha sounds amused and ready, as if she has been mentally preparing herself to address it a dozen times during the day. At a later point, she also heaves and says the words 'problematic' and 'automatic' many times in quick succession, as if to infantilise the 'outrage' she was recently subjected to.