Arjun Kapoor defends his Bihari accent

Arjun Kapoor is facing a bit of a backlash for his Bihari accent in Half Girlfriend sounding phoney to some.

The actor protests, “But I’ve also had people saying that my accent is fine. So I don’t know what to believe. It’s fine for people in Bihar to have doubts about the way I speak. But I’d love every Bihari to give my character and his accent a chance. We’ve worked diligently on maintaining honesty in the spoken words.”

Arjun reveals his accent coach worked by his side throughout the film. “I also spent a lot of time with other Bihari friends during the workshop. I was sure that I didn’t want to make my character a caricature or a Bihari stereotype. We wanted Madhav Jha to be representative of the class that wants to rise above linguistic biases.”

The actor rues the fact that it’s not considered ‘cool’ to be from a Hindi-medium school. “I think it’s very important to know your maatr bhaasha (mother tongue) though there’s no harm in being fluent in English. But the language we speak isn’t important; it’s what we say that’s important.”