'The Night Manager' co-director: Women aren’t trusted enough to handle action

Updated On: 16 June, 2023 07:14 AM IST | Mumbai | Mohar Basu

Lamenting that action has long been a male bastion, The Night Manager co-director Priyanka on how she fought stereotyping and detractors to enjoy helming the genre

Priyanka Ghose

Call it the Hindi film industry’s bias or what you may, but action movies are always associated with men. Which is why Priyanka Ghose co-directing The Night Manager could be viewed as an anomaly by many around her. When we sit down to chat with her ahead of the thriller’s second part dropping online this month, Ghose states matter-of-factly, “[Action offerings] are a male bastion.” So, when she got the opportunity to helm the Anil Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur and Sobhita Dhulipala-led action series, she “ran with it”. “Over the years, female directors rarely took up action. It could be a mix of both — a lack of interest from their side, and they are not trusted enough to handle it. I got the opportunity here, and had a lot of fun doing the action extravaganza. There are elaborate set-pieces directed by me. All it takes is one man to trust you, and Sandeep [Modi, showrunner-director] trusted me. He saw value in my interest in the genre,” she says.

Kapur plays a hotel manager-turned-spy