Abhay Deol on claims of being difficult to work with, lazy: ‘Dibakar Banerjee told me negative stories will be deliberately printed’

Actor Abhay Deol interview responded to allegations that he is lazy and difficult to work with. Abhay has previously accused director Anurag Kashyap of gaslighting him, and Anurag had gone on record to say that Abhay wasn’t easy to work with on their cult hit Dev D.
In an interview with Film Companion, Abhay repeated the commented about being gaslit a filmmaker, and said that the filmmaker in question ‘has an agenda of his own’. He also accused filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee of admitting that negative stories would be deliberately published in the media about their film Shanghai.
Also read: Abhay Deol calls Dev D director Anurag Kashyap ‘gaslighter’, enters North-South debate: ‘There’s a mish-mash happening’
Responding to allegations of laziness, Abhay said, “If it’s not going to push me creatively… A lot of times, I can just show up, read a scene, and do it, and it can come across as lazy… My preparation comes from within.”
He continued, “I can’t defend myself… But I will say, in my defence, people have an agenda and I’ve been gaslit… I would just say, don’t believe everything you hear. It’s sad, the vocal ones are the ones that get printed, and if it’s repeated enough times, it becomes the truth. That doesn’t mean it is.”
Abhay did, however, reveal that filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee admitted to him that ‘deliberate negative marketing’ was done for their film Shanghai. He said, “Dibakar literally told me, ‘We’re going to put some false negative stories because that gets more eyeballs’. And then they got a journal who I had a contentious relationship with, so he put negative stories about me only! So, I got very upset with Dibakar, and now those stories are out, and they’re completely false, and I’m taking names and giving you…”
Abhay is best known for cult hits such as Dev D, of course, but also Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! Manorama: Six Feet Under, and Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd. In recent years, he has switched to more lowkey work, as his reputation in the industry wavered, perhaps because of the negative stories that he spoke about.