Bollywood actress Surveen Chawla has let the cat out of the bag by disclosing some of her past experiences related to casting couch.
During a podcast interview, the ‘Rana Naidu’ actress narrated multiple instances of inappropriate behavior she faced during screen tests. She recounted an incident that happened with one National Award winning director from the Tamil industry who subjected her to a tedious audition process during which she felt awkward.
“It was a 12-hour screentest. He gave a monologue in Tamil language. I was supposed to remember and perform before the screen. Costume change, numerous retakes, look change. I came back to Mumbai, suffering from a high fever. Two days later, I got a call. The director didn’t know how to speak in Hindi or English. He knows only Tamil. His friend would assist him, who acted like a pimp, that’s what he was doing,” she said, adding that the director wanted to come to Mumbai to take care of her.
Chawla sensed something off when the award-winning director wanted to spend more time with her. “The person on the call never came to the point. And finally, I asked if sir wants to sleep with me? Literally in these words. I said sorry you are knocking at the wrong door. I am not here bartering myself in exchange for work,” the actress recalled.
The actress explained the audacity of the director to further pursue “commitment” for the project which had never seen the light of the day. “He was explaining to me about his “great films” in the past just to pursue whether I am willing to join the project. See the audacity of the person. Whatever film that didn’t work out for me, either it has not been released or bombed at the box office very badly. Not once or twice, it has happened 20 times,” Chawla added.
Surveen further spoke about body shaming in the film industry down south. Recalling her initial meetings with directors, she was questioned about her weight and bossoms. “When you go down south you need to put on weight. If you come back here you need to shed,” she said adding how she was questioned about being leen. “Bossoms nahin hain, kuch hilega nahin kuch bounce nahin honge. There was no sophistication when it happened to me. I used to give it back right on the face,” she said.
Related