Filmfare Awards withdraws Kangana Ranaut’s nomination for Best Actor after she threatened to sue them for inviting her

A day after Bollywood’s Kangana Ranaut has openly threatened to sue Filmfare Magazine for nominating and inviting her to their award show, the Indian magazine has now revoked her nomination for Best Actor for her film Thalaivii. In a statement, the magazine has said the actor’s accusations are “false”.

On Sunday, Ranaut took to Instagram and wrote, “I have banned unethical, corrupt and totally unfair practices like Filmfare since 2014, but since I have been getting many calls from them for attending their award function this year as they want to give me award for Thalaivii. I am shocked to know that they are still nominating me… it is beneath my dignity, work ethics and value system to encourage such corrupt practices in anyway, this is why i have decided to sue Filmfare… thanks.”

She shared a story from 2013 to back up her claims. “Back in 2013 Filmfare clearly told me that if I don’t attend their award show or dance on the stage I won’t get awards and I made it clear to them back in 2013 that I will never attend anything which is morally deprived and unethical so when they know I won’t attend and as a policy they won’t give awards to those who don’t attend so why nominations? What is the purpose of nominations? Making desperate blackmailing calls to attend the awards after pitted against mediocre work… what is the purpose of all this,” she questioned.

According to the Hindustan Times, the magazine has now issued a statement. “As is customary during the awards, Filmfare’s Executive Editor informed Ms. Ranaut about her nomination in the Best Actor in a Leading Role, Female category and asked for her address to send across the invitation.”

They also shared an excerpt from what they originally sent to Ranaut. The message congratulated the actor on her nomination and invited her for the award ceremony. In return they asked for her to confirm her presence on August 30 for the award show in Mumbai, India. They also asked Ranaut for her address so they could formally send her the invite.

“At no time was there any insinuation of an award being given to her or any request for performance at the event made,” the statement continued.

“This is a patently false accusation being made by Ms Ranaut. Our invitation to her was our effort in bringing together everyone in a collective celebration of what brings this nation together, i.e. Indian Cinema. Filmfare Awards are a celebration of cinematic excellence and are awarded irrespective of the fact that a nominee attends or performs at the function,” read the statement. It was also mentioned that the actor was awarded even though she was absent in 2014 and 2015 despite knowing that she won’t attend or even perform.

Given the remarks passed by Ranaut about the Filmfare Awards, they revoked her nomination and stated, “we are withdrawing her Best Actress nomination for the movie Thalaivii. We reserve all rights to pursue any legal action against her malicious and defamatory statements tarnishing our reputation and goodwill.”

The Queen actor had also written that her work is like “worship” for her as she gained 20kg for film Thalaivii while dealing with high cholesterol and borderline thyroid as well. “I learnt Bharatnatyam and Tamil for two years, my craft is not for creativity poor, morally corrupt unethical bunch of mafia clowns to exploit,” she wrote while also mentioning the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput and his cause of death to bolster her claims about “corrupt award shows and magazine giants who operate on movie mafia guidelines.”

Acknowledging the withdrawal, she thanked everyone who supported her in this “fight against corrupt system” but mentioned that this doesn’t stop her from taking legal action against the magazine. “My endeavour is to put an end to these unethical practices and stop such malicious award shows. See you in court Filmfare,” Ranaut concluded.

On the work front, Ranaut’s lates film Dhaakad alongside Divya Dutta and Arjun Rampal released in May. She has Tejas with Varun Mitra and Anshul Chauhan and Emergency starring Anupam Kher, Mahima Chaudhry and Shreyas Talpade in the pipeline.