Discuss; don’t trivialise

Returning to Bollywood post Phillauri, Mehreen Pirzada on triggering a conversation about marital rape with Sultan of Delhi

Six years after making her Bollywood debut with the Anushka Sharma-starrer Phillauri, Mehreen Pirzada returned to Hindi entertainment with the Milan Luthria-directed Sultan of Delhi. Adapted from the novel Sultan of Delhi: Ascension, the period crime thriller showcases Pirzada as the young woman, Sanjana, who is portrayed as a naive and fragile soul deeply invested in love. As the story unfolds, she experiences a profound sense of betrayal that shatters her world. Sharing her excitement of working with filmmaker Luthria on her debut OTT project, she says, “I became a fan after watching Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai [2010] and The Dirty Picture [2011]. I loved the era, the songs, the retro look, and the snazzy dialogues. I manifested working with him some day. I was excited to meet him and take on the role of Sanjana when he told me about her.”

Milan Luthria

Pirzada shares that she “loved the character and storyline” of the gangster drama, and the opportunity to learn from the ensemble cast—Tahir Raj Bhasin, Mouni Roy, Vinay Pathak, Anupriya Goenka, and Harleen Sethi—was not one to miss. Breaking down her character in the Disney+ Hotstar series, she says, “Sanjana longs to form real connections. Her mental and emotional turmoil is a result of her own doings, but the arc was so interesting to play. She suffers marital rape, and it was a subject I wanted to portray to trigger a discussion.” While the scene did spark a conversation, Pirzada shares that a certain section of the media and audience trivialised the trauma by calling it a “sex scene”. She recently took to X (formerly known as Twitter) and wrote, “This trivialises something that is a serious issue that many women in the world are currently dealing with. People should understand that they have sisters and daughters too. I pray to God they never have to go through such trauma in their own lives, as the thought of such brutality and violence against women is repugnant.”

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