Kangana Ranaut has now revealed in an interview that she had made significant contributions to the film, including coming up with whole scenes. Queen was directed by Vikas Bahl, and won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi
Talking about her interest in filmmaking and screenwriting, the Manikarnika actor/co-director said on Sit With Hitlist, “This was during the time I was not getting good work, doing films like Rascals (2011). I went off to New York to learn screenwriting.
I understand direction, music-process, but writing made me curious. Queen was happening then. Vikas was an unusual director. We would construct scenes on set. He felt that everyone else on set knows more than him. I am the same way, when I am directing.
I gave a lot of inputs in Queen — the break-up scene in the cafeteria, the Italian kissing scene, were my ideas. There were a lot of situations suggested by me. When I saw the film finally, I was glad it worked out well together.”
She also accepted that had Queen not been a success, she would have been on the verge of quitting the industry. “It was the end of my career. Everything was over. And I was doing films that would further harm me. I was doing 10-minute roles, working in the launch-vehicle of a politician’s son. I did all of this to sponsor my education in the US,” she said.
For the record, Kangana has earlier been part of controversies for sharing the writer’s credit with Apurva Asrani on the 2017 film Simran. The film had failed to perform at the box office. She was also involved in an ugly spat with Manikarnika co-director Krish who accused her of hijacking the film. But the actor has repeatedly claimed to have taken over the direction of the film only after he abandoned the project.
Kangana hasn’t looked back ever since and followed Queen with another blockbuster, Tanu Weds Manu Returns. The actor shared the director’s credit with Krish for her last film, Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi. The film managed to cross the Rs 100 crore mark at the domestic box office.