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Actor Mita Vashisht spoke about a harrowing casting couch encounter with a filmmaker from the Telugu industry. She said that she was attending the Chennai Film Festival when it happened, and that the person in question attempted to obstruct her from leaving the room that they were in, and then proceeded to chase her outside as she made her way back to safety.
In an interview with The Lallantop, Mita was asked if she has ever had a casting couch experience, and she said that she has. Without taking any names, she narrated the story of what happened. “A Telugu director offered me the lead role in his film. The actress he’d worked with on his previous film had won a National Award. He offered me the lead role, and said that I will have to live with him for two months. For a second, I thought that his English was weak, and that he maybe meant that I would have to visit his house to prepare,” she said.
Mita added, “He sensed that I hadn’t understood, so he repeated himself. ‘You understand when I say live with me?’ This was when I had two films in the Chennai Film Festival, and my friends – Kumar Shahani and Khalid Mohammed – were all in the next room.” Mita said that she turned down the proposition, and tried to leave. But the filmmaker blocked the door. Mita said that she started laughing, and this threw him off, so she managed to escape and make her way back to her friends.
Kumar Shahani asked her if somebody had ‘made a nasty pass’ at her, and by then, the filmmaker had stumbled into their room. They calmly told him to sit down and have a drink. “He was overcome by lust, the blood had rushed to his head,” she recalled.
She was asked if this was an isolated incident, or if she has had similar experiences on more than one occasion. She said that she makes it clear to directors that she isn’t going to sleep with them, and that some of them ended up casting her anyway. “People respect you. After you’ve told them clearly and they still keep you in the film, they don’t mess with you,” she said.
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