Varsha Bharath on How Anurag Kashyap Helped 'Bad Girl' Find Its Music

When director Varsha Bharath was giving shape to Bad Girl in the edit room, music wasn’t even part of the equation. The film’s earliest cuts played out in silence, stitched together with scraps of a playlist that the team leaned on to fill the emptiness.

“There was no music director at that point; just our reference music, our little Bad Girl playlist,” Varsha recalled in a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India. “It was such a different vibe with that music, as opposed to what it is now. The music works so well. I think Amit Trivedi has done a fab job. And that was because of Anurag.”

A film which began with no music at all, now sings because of it. “He watched the film and he was like, this is actually a musical. You need Amit Trivedi. And that’s how he came on board,” Varsha says.

When Kashyap first encountered Bad Girl, the cut was rough. “He watched the first half and he was like, send me the second half immediately. And then we exported it, subtitled the portions that we had just added, and sent it to him." What Kashyap saw was raw, but he also recognised the potential and possibility.

The journey until then had been taxing. “My editor Radha and I would always complain about how something or the other is not working out. And Vetrimaaran sir is also a pretty critical person. He’s not someone who’d say you’ve got these things right. He would only talk about the things that were not working,” Varsha shares.

Kashyap’s intervention was more than just practical; it was a jolt of energy. “It was honestly such a boost of confidence that we all needed at that point.”

Starring Anjali Sivaraman and others, Bad Girl is releasing in theatres on September 5.