Actor Radhika Apte, known for her speaking her mind and slamming patriarchal attitudes, revealed in a recent interview how she'd reacted when a well-known actor had tried to tickle her on the set of a Telugu film.
Radhika and Bollywood actor Rajkummar Rao were on the chat show ‘BFFs with Vogue’, hosted by actor Neha Dhupia when Radhika spoke about the incident.
In a segment, Neha asks both her guests about the things they did to survive as struggling actors in their first two years, before they became popular. Rajkummar talked about doing small roles as well as commercials.
Radhika, meanwhile, said that she did south Indian films.
“They pay you well, and you bloody deserve it… But it’s very hard,” she said.
Neha responded, saying that she has heard about lack of gender equality in the south film industries.
“I wouldn’t want to generalize it. But the projects I worked in, there definitely was [lack of gender equality],” Radhika says. The men in the south film industries are very powerful, she adds, and then recounts an anecdote from a Telugu project she was working on.
“My first day in the Telugu film. There is a scene where I am lying [down], because I am unwell. There are a lot of people; everything is set. And the [male] actor walks in – and we’ve been rehearsing – he walks in… I don’t even know him, and he starts tickling my feet!” she narrated.
“He was a big actor… I was told he is powerful. But [the person] who I am, I got up and I snapped at him in front of everybody – the whole crew, the junior artists, everybody. And I looked at him and said, “don’t ever, ever do that to me.” I was so angry, I told him “ever, ever!” […] He was so shocked, because he didn’t expect that. But he never touched me again,” Radhika said.
She added that she had had a completely different experience while working with Rajinikanth. They co-starred in Kabali. Radhika called him “the nicest, the most wonderful human being”, and said that nothing like that happened to her in his film. Emphasising that she didn’t want to generalize the gender disparity in south film industries, she said that she faced the problem in two Telugu films she worked in.
Radhika also talked about her early years when she was typecast into the role a ‘good’ woman from a village. And how she eventually broke out of it.
Watch the interview here from 13:10 where Radhika talks about the incident with the actor in the Telugu film. A number of publications, mostly based on a Mumbai Mirror report, had wrongly reported that Radhika had 'slapped' a male actor who was from the south.
The Kabali and Parched actor is known to be vocal about her views on sexism and misogyny in the film industry. Radhika had previously slammed a reporter for asking questions about a leaked sex scene with her and Adil Hussain from Parched.
Later, she said that she was no longer affected by these things, because she was an artist and was comfortable with her body.