Need both male, female gaze to create rounded characters: 'Thappad' co-writer Mrunmayee

"Thappad" co-writer Mrunmayee Lagoo says to create a humane character, it's important to have a balance of male and female gaze while writing the part.

Mrunmayee, who has teamed up with filmmaker Anubhav Sinha for the Taapsee Pannu-starrer, believes the conversation about male and female gaze has picked up steam in recent times.

"Specially, when it's a film with a woman protagonist, it comes up even more. We had a lot of arguments which were not because of a difference of opinions but about an aesthetic choice of how to do something," Mrunmayee said.

The writer was speaking at a special screening of "Thappad", attended by the cast and crew. The session was moderated by filmmaker Anurag Kashyap.

Mrunmayee said Anubhav, with his gaze, gave another dimension to Taapsee's lead character of Amrita.

"For me, the learning was, when Anubhav was handling Amrita's character on set, I was looking at her in a certain way, which was my informed thinking of how this kind of a woman should be. He had a different interesting view about her. He saw her as someone who could be flawed as well."
The writer said Anubhav's different perspective was "one of the biggest contributions of male gaze."