Nayanthara speaks up about her open letter to Dhanush: 'He was a good friend, not a PR stunt'

Nayanthara and Dhanush

Tamil stars Nayanthara and Dhanush made headlines after the actress published an open letter criticizing the latter for sending her a Rs 10 cr notice for using a BTS clip from their movie 'Naanum Rowdy Dhaan' for the Netflix documentary on Nayanthara's life and love story with Vignesh Shivan. After dropping the open letter, Nayanthara did not speak about it until now. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, Nayanthara explained why she wrote the letter. She also said that Dhanush was a close friend and she tried to talk to him about the issue.

Not a PR stunt for documentary, clears Nayanthara

"Courage only comes from the truth. I only have to be scared when I'm fabricating something. If I'm not doing that, I don't have to be scared. If I didn't speak out now, when things had already gone too far, I don't think anyone would have the courage to stand up for themselves ever again," Nayanthara said adding, "Why should I be scared of doing something which I feel is right? I should be scared only if I'm doing something wrong. I'm not someone who would want to tarnish someone's image just for the sake of publicity."

"Why I am saying this is because there are a lot of people who have supported us largely but there are also a lot of people who are supposedly his fans and well wishers, which is fine, but for them to say that we did it as a PR stunt for the film? I don't think that was the intention at all. I mean it never even crossed our minds. The film is not meant to be viewed as a film. It's a documentary. You like the person, you want to know more about the person, you watched the film. It doesn't come under the bracket of a hit or a flop," she added.

Nayanthara tried to reach out to Dhanush

"The controversy happened because I spoke out and I wanted to speak in public. Because I personally and genuinely tried to reach out to him so that I can have a direct answer (as to) why and what's the issue," Nayanthara said. She revealed that her husband and director of Naanum Rowdy Dhaan, Vignesh Shivan, made several calls to Dhanush's manager and even she connected with the manager to resolve the issue but couldn't get through to the actor. She also said that she tried to reach out to him through their common friends but failed to connect with him.

"When the trailer released, the BTS footage that was captured on our phones before, the thing that people don't understand that… There are a lot of people saying that ‘It is his footage, it's his rights.' We are not at all talking about the clips from the film. BTS is a part of the contract only now. This was 10 years before, there were people randomly taking pictures and videos on phones. And these were random videos on our phones. So this was the thing we used, which is hardly anything. Even after so much issues that were created by him or his people, I would say, when the trailer came out, anybody who is a little bit sorted, would have let it be," she explained.