Indian actor Ram Charan, who starred in the Oscar-winning historical action film RRR, thanked his unborn child during a red carpet interview on Sunday for bringing the movie “so much luck” during award season.
Charan and wife Upasana Konidela, who is currently six months pregnant, attended the Academy Awards alongside the rest of the cast and crew of the movie. RRR tells the story of a fictional friendship between two Indian anti-British struggle heroes, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, who did not meet in real life. The movie describes the two historical figures working together to end British imperialism, with particular emphasis on the importance of accessing firearms to defend India from foreign occupation.
RRR won Best Original Song at Sunday’s Academy Awards and had won the same award at Golden Globes previously for “Naatu Naatu,” a song which, in the movie, plays during an aggressive dance competition between the British occupiers and the Indian stars of the film. Charan’s character, Raju, lets his now-friend Bheem win the competition to impress a British woman, Jenny, who had invited him to a formal British party.
The scene was filmed on the grounds of the Mariinsky Palace, the official residence of the president of Ukraine, shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country began last year. In an interview in 2021, RRR director S.S. Rajamouli said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky granted permission for the scene to be filmed there “because the Ukrainian president was a television actor” and was happy to oblige.
In an interview on the red carpet, as narrated by the Hindustan Times, Charan celebrated the upcoming birth of the couple’s first child and credited the unborn baby with bringing the Telugu-language film “luck.”
“The baby is bringing us so much luck. From the Globes to standing with you guys here,” he beamed.
The celebration of unborn life at Hollywood’s most prestigious event was a rarity for the American film industry, whose members have often used their platforms to celebrate and promote abortion. Hollywood celebrities were among the loudest opponents of the Supreme Court’s decision last year on the case Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning Roe v. Wade and thus allowing states to decide their own abortion laws rather than imposing a federal standard.
“Not too long ago, this would have been dystopian sci-fi,” Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane despaired.
“Banning abortion is about controlling women and trans men,” actress Alyssa Milano wrote on social media. The Supreme Court decision did not “ban” abortion.
Last week, longtime far-left activist Jane Fonda told the television program The View that she considered “murder” as a form of expressing her support for abortion, presumably referring to people who have been born in addition to victims of abortion.
“We have experienced for many decades now of having agency over our bodies, of being able to determine when and how many children to have. We know what that feels like,” Fonda said. “We know what that’s done for our lives. We’re not going back. I don’t care what the laws are. We’re not going back.”
This year’s Oscars host, Jimmy Kimmel, also participated in Hollywood’s pro-abortion push last year by granting his wife, television producer Molly McNearney, time on his comedy program to deliver a harangue about abortions in November.
“I’m asking you to love women enough to trust women enough to make their own difficult decisions and to vote for the people who will make that happen tomorrow,” McNearney said at the time. “Our daughters should not have to fight the battles that our grandmothers won.”
Perhaps the most emblematic abortion moment in recent Hollywood memory occurred in 2020, however, when actress Michelle Williams used her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes awards to assert that she would not have won the award without using her “right to choose.”
“I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making and not just the series of events that happen to you but one that I can stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over, sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise,” Williams said, “but one that I have carved with my own hand and I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose.”
Abortion, like in the United States, is legal in India. Rather than leaving the issue to the states, the Indian Parliament passed a law in 1971 legalizing abortion up to 24 weeks. In September, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the law applies to all women, not just married women as the law had previously distinguished.
India had a particularly successful night at Sunday’s Academy Awards, bringing home RRR‘s Best Original Song accolade as well as the film The Elephant Whisperers, telling the story of an indigenous couple who cares for elephants in India, winning Best Documentary Short Subject.
Best Original Song goes to 'Naatu Naatu' from 'RRR' #Oscars #Oscars95 pic.twitter.com/ptah2GWLJH
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 13, 2023
The film’s victories prompted congratulations from nearly every high-profile political figure in the country, including Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Exceptional! The popularity of ‘Naatu Naatu’ is global,” Modi wrote in a message on social media. “It will be a song that will be remembered for years to come. … India is elated and proud.”
Rajamouli, the film’s director said in an interview with the Agence France-Presse (AFP) last month that he hoped Indian cinema could become more welcome in the West similar to the success of South Korean movies.
“If you see (South) Korea, for example, the kind of inroads that they have made … we should aspire to do that, all Indian film-makers,” he said. A South Korean film, Parasite, won the Academy Award for best picture in 2020.
He credited a “lack of maximalist entertainment” in the West for the popularity of his movie.
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