Abhay Deol weighs in on Hindi vs South language row, says 'there’s a bit of mish-mash happening'

In the ongoing Hindi vs South language debate, Abhay Deol weighed in on it and said that Hindi cinema is a "part of" Indian cinema, just like Bengali, Tamil cinema and others. The language row has become a topic of discussion recently, especially as movie tickets of South films like Pushpa, KGF: Chapter 2 and RRR have been selling like hotcakes at the Hindi box office.

Abhay said that the South Indian film industry always existed and has always had its audience. "It’s just that if you’re from the North, and watching news related to that—you’re just not watching news related to outside it. You’re ignorant of that existence, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist," he told Bollywood Hungama.

Just like Tamil or Malayalam cinema, Abhay shares that Bollywood can also be considered regional too as it caters to the Hindi belt. "They’ve always co-existed. Now, we’re embracing a larger Indian identity than just the regional belt — and Bollywood could be considered regional too, as it appeals to the Hindi belt. Now, there’s a bit of mish-mash happening because you realise, oh ‘Baahubali looks great’, or ‘this actor looks interesting, let’s take him in a different language movie’ and vice-versa," he said.

In the same interview, Abhay had to dub a descriptive word to a few celebs and while he was all praise for Katrina Kaif, Farhan Akhtar and Shah Rukh Khan, he dubbed Anurag Kashyap a "gaslighter".

The actor, who worked with Kashyap in the 2008 film Dev D, said that he wanted his film to speak for itself instead of marking himself, but was "gaslit" by certain filmmakers into thinking he didn't care enough for the film.

On the work front, Abhay was seen last in Velle alongside Mouni Roy. He also starred in the English film, Spin in 2021.