Dhurandhar actor Saumya Tandon defends film against misogyny allegations: ‘Sorry, no heroines singing songs on beaches’

Saumya Tandon defended Dhurandhar, noting that although the story is set in a male-dominated world, the women in it are still portrayed with dignity.

Actor Saumya Tandon has stepped forward to defend Ranveer Singh and Akshaye Khanna-starrer Dhurandhar after a social media user labelled the spy thriller as misogynistic and accused it of promoting aggression. She argued that the women in the film are neither beaten nor objectified.

Saumya Tandon took to social media to defend Dhurandhar.

Saumya defends Dhurandhar

It all started when one social media user took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to slam Dhurandhar for promoting misogyny.

The post read, “Step 1: be a male actor in Bollywood who is known for being a soft-boy. Step 2: realize you are becoming irrelevant and your female audience is losing interest. Step 3: grow out your beard and hair to look like a mindless caveman with no hygiene so you can cater to the male audience. Step 4: star in a misogynistic movie as a manchild with 0 emotional intelligence and get thousands of fanboys and fanmen. Step 5: promote aggression and misogyny under the name of “masculinity” and earn crores of rupees while real men get influenced by your actions and go around doing real harm to women. But you don’t care cause you’re rich and have no ethics… Some more such examples : Shahid Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor.”

Saumya's tweet.

As the post triggered a debate online, another social media user stepped in to defend the project, citing a specific example from the film to make their point. “Both the female leads legit slap men and they don't even react. This woman wouldn't have even watched Dhurandhar but as usual making lame points to play woman card which has no relation with the movie,” the tweet read.

Later, Saumya also weighed in to defend the film, noting that although the story is set in a male-dominated world, the women in it are still portrayed with dignity. She added that the film’s tone doesn’t lend itself to glamorous heroines dancing on exotic beaches, unlike other projects.

Reacting to the tweet, Saumya wrote, “Agreed. In the universe Dhurandhar is set in, with the societal norms the director chose to depict, it is a male-dominated world , yet the women are treated with dignity. They aren’t beaten, objectified, or shown as one of many wives, even though that society could have allowed it. It’s important to remember we’re dealing with a very different world.”

“Sorry that the grain of this story doesn’t allow for glamorous heroines singing songs on exotic beaches, that may work for other scripts, but not in this one. That said, as an actor, I do hope I also get opportunities to be part of women-centric narratives,” she added.

In the film, Saumya is seen in the character of Ulfat, the wife of Rehman Dakait (Akshaye Khanna).

About Dhurandhar

The spy thriller is set in Pakistan. It features Ranveer as an Indian spy who infiltrates the terror networks based in Lyari. It also stars Akshay Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, and R Madhavan in pivotal roles. The thriller opened to an explosive response at the box office. So far, the film has collected over ₹150 crore, as per Sacnilk.com. Dhurandhar is directed by Aditya Dhar.