Pankaj Tripathi responds to Mirzapur MP’s objections against the show, says ‘if there are criminals, there’s also a hero’
Actor Pankaj Tripathi has reacted to Mirzapur MP Anupriya Patel’s objections against the namesake show’s depiction of the Uttar Pradesh town. Read his statement here.
Pankaj Tripathi, responding to Mirzapur MP Anupriya Patel’s demand for action against the namesake show, has said that he is merely an actor, and has reminded everyone that the show is fictional. Mirzapur returned for a second season on Amazon Prime Video on October 23.
The MP had previously slammed its portrayal of the Uttar Pradesh town as a hotbed of vice and violence. In a tweet, she said that the town was in fact ‘a centre of harmony’.
Pankaj, who plays the gangster Kaleen bhaiya in the show, told DNA in an interview, “There is a disclaimer that comes before every episode which reads that Mirzapur is a fictional story and does not have any relation to an individual and/or place. I am an actor and I wouldn’t have much to say on this beyond what I have stated.” He added, “Having said that, I would like to add that in ‘Mirzapur’ series, if there are criminals, there’s also a hero by the name Ramakanth Pandit (Rajesh Tailang), who wants to do good for the city.”
In a separate incident, Hindi crime writer Surendra Mohan Pathak has claimed that his book, Dhabba, has been misrepresented in the show, and has threatened Amazon Prime with legal action, demanding the sequence be removed.
The author has alleged that a scene shows actor Kulbhushan Kharbanda (as Satyananad Tripathi) reading Dhabba, but the content that he is shown reading is not the “original text of Dhabba”. The author added, “On the contrary, what is being read is sheer porno, the undersigned cannot even dream of writing, supposedly to titillate the viewers. But in the process, the whole sequence is shown as an excerpt from my novel Dhabba, which amounts to mischievous misrepresentation.”
Mirzapur also stars Ali Fazal, Divyendu Sharma, Shweta Tripathi Sharma and Rasika Dugal, among others. Hindustan Times’ mixed review of season two noted, “If Mirzapur was an awkward teenager eager to make an impression in the big boys’ club, Mirzapur season 2 is a middle-aged man who is burdened by everything he has seen. Where Mirzapur waltzed in, Mirzapur 2 treads cautiously. If Mirzapur revelled in sensationalising sex and violence, Mirzapur 2 knows that you are already invested in the dark, dark world of the Amazon Prime series. It is here to give you your fix.”
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