"It Was An Apt Way To...": 'Animal' Actress Mansi Taxak Defends Marital Rape Scene Featuring Her And Bobby Deol
'Animal' actress Mansi Taxak appeared to defend the marital rape scene in the Sandeep Reddy Vanga directorial.
Sandeep Reddy Vanga's latest directorial venture 'Animal' continues to receive flak for glorifying toxic masculinity in certain disturbing scenes. The new Hindi movie, starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna and Triptii Dimri, might have made more than Rs 300 crore at the domestic box office, but one cannot ignore the discourse around the film regarding its objectionable portrayal of certain themes. Actress Mansi Taxak, who played one of the three wives of the character Abrar (Bobby Deol) in 'Animal', spoke about a scene where her character was subjected to marital rape by her husband.
In the latest entertainment news, Mansi Taxak denied that any sort of assault happened in the scene.
“It is shocking, of course. Nobody expects their wedding to end that way. When the wedding sequence starts, if you see the lights, the way the art was done, it was beautiful. You hear the music, that has gone so viral on Instagram. It was heading towards a beautiful end, and suddenly, you see something like this happening. It was to tell the audience that and animal is coming; if you thought Ranbir was this way, you can expect the villain to be (worse),” Mansi Taxak told Zoom Entertainment.
"It was an apt way to establish Bobby sir’s character and to show the audience what real animal we’re talking about," she added.
The ‘Animal’ actress then took a breath, and added with a laugh, “I would not wish that to happen at my wedding ever.”
For the unversed, in this particular scene of 'Animal', Mansi Taxak's character was assaulted after her husband Abrar (played by Bobby Deol) is informed about the death of his brother. In the scene, Bobby Deol's character first lashes out by killing the messenger, and he then goes ahead to violently assault Mansi Taxak's character, the youngest of his three wives.
Once he is done, Abrar gestures for his other two wives to join them in the bedroom. Mansi Taxak then said that Bobby Deol was commendable in the scene and when she was told about the criticism the film has been receiving, the actress appeared to suggest that her character was in love with Abrar.
“If you see the scene before that, the wedding scene, if you see the sort of chemistry that we have, the eye contact that we have… It tells you the back-story, that besides their differences, their age, their careers, they do love each other, and that’s why they’re getting married,” Mansi Taxak said.
“It was not the intent to show that any sort of assault was happening. It was just that Bobby sir did not expect his brother’s death news to come on the wedding, which puts the character into a zone where he couldn’t think straight. And that’s what we’re talking about, right? Animal instincts are unpredictable instincts. So he goes into that zone, and to vent out his emotions, he comes to his wives. I don’t think it was intended to be any sort of assault. I didn’t feel it on the set, or in the script. That was not the case. It was just a relationship between two people that has panned out the way it did," she added.
'Animal' directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga, minted Rs 23.50 crore across all languages on Friday, and now the total nett domestic collection of the film stands at a massive Rs 361.08 crore.
With this, 'Animal' has gone past the lifetime collection of 'Sanju' to become the highest-grossing film of Ranbir Kapoor's career.
