My heart goes out to Bhansali: Shahid Kapoor on Padmavati controversy

Mumbai: Shahid Kapoor's upcoming movie Padmavati has been stuck into many controversies. The fringes and political leaders are protesting against the film claiming that director Sanjay Leela Bhansali has distorted history and hurt sentiments.

At the film award function recently, when Shahid was asked for giving out a message to the fans as well the ones opposing the release of the upcoming period film Padmavati, the ‘Rangoon’ actor stated, "No one wants to make a film to hurt sentiments because it’s for as many people as possible to see. I hope people will believe in that. This film has a lot of firsts attached to it. I don’t know what the end result will be - better than what we expect or worse. People react to a story anyway, and if it has originality and the right cinematic quality, it will work. The reaction will be positive. This is a really good film and I am hoping people will like it."

Talking about his director Sanjay Bhansali and how much he feels for his stuck position right now, Shahid further said, "My heart goes out to Bhansali. He’s probably the finest filmmaker I have worked with. He has tried his level best. See, eventually, everything becomes subjective. It’s a democracy and everyone can have an opinion. The whole idea of a democracy is to respect one another’s opinion and do our work with a lot of love, affection, warmth and a belief that the person on the other side is not deliberately trying to harm us. Bhansali has been at the receiving end of a lot of criticism. He has not been able to show his film. And for someone of his calibre to not be able to do that at this juncture in his career is not right. I am just wishing, praying and sending him my love every day of my life. Let’s just see the film because it’s already been shot."

Shahid is playing Rajput king Maharawal Ratan Singh in the film that stars Deepika Padukone as his wife Rani Padmini and Ranveer Singh as Alauddin Khilji.

The ‘Padmavati’ makers had to defer the December 1 release and are still awaiting the clearance from the censor board. The new release date announcement will be made soon.