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Zoya Akhtar Addresses Ranveer's 'Brown Face' In 'Gully Boy', Says It Wasn't Intentional

Akhtar confirmed that Singh’s face had indeed been darkened, but apparently only because he had a tan when he began shooting.
Screenshot from YouTube

Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy opened last week to great reviews and greater numbers at the box office. While the exceptional performances by Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Vijay Varma didn’t go unnoticed, neither did Singh’s brown face.

Through the film Singh, who played Murad, looked visibly darker as if his faced had been bronzed so that he ‘looked’ the part of someone who lives in Dharavi, the biggest slum in Mumbai.

Akhtar, in an interview with Huffpost India, confirmed that Singh’s face had indeed been darkened, but apparently only because he had a tan when he began shooting.

“He came from a holiday in Maldives. He came back toasty. So when we started shooting that’s how he was looking but he started fading. Now we had to keep him toasty to keep the consistency,” Akhtar said.

However, she said the intention wasn’t to make Singh look darker. “We didn’t do that to anyone. They can’t be peachy either though. There is a certain sun-spotting that comes when you live like that the whole time, spending a lot of time in the sun. They aren’t applying sunscreens. For someone like Amrita Shubhash (who plays Ranveer’s mother), she’s young but she looks like she’s lived. You don’t shoot in sequence so you have to keep it going. But no, I’m not a brown-facer.”

Gully Boy is based on the lives of Indian rappers Naezy and DIVINE, who grew up in the slums of Mumbai.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.