Actor Kalki Koechlin has spoken candidly about the problems that she has faced in the film industry, ranging from prejudice based on her looks, to sexual harassment. Kalki was speaking to Pinkvilla about becoming a mother for the first time.
The actor said that she could not land a job for around nine months after appeared in 2013’s Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, a blockbuster success starring Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone. “I have literally had eight nine months of no work coming to me. That too after Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani,” she said.
Kalki said that she received an indirect proposition from a film producer, who blacklisted her after she refused to go out with him. She said, “It was not sexual proposition directly but indirectly. A producer wanted to go out on a date with me. I said no and he never got back. The film didn’t happen.” The actor said that she has spoken about having suffered abuse in the past. “I have undergone sexual abuse and I opened up about it first to my therapist and to my then partner. Later, during a conference that Rahul Bose was organising, I discussed it.”
{{/usCountry}}Kalki said that she received an indirect proposition from a film producer, who blacklisted her after she refused to go out with him. She said, “It was not sexual proposition directly but indirectly. A producer wanted to go out on a date with me. I said no and he never got back. The film didn’t happen.” The actor said that she has spoken about having suffered abuse in the past. “I have undergone sexual abuse and I opened up about it first to my therapist and to my then partner. Later, during a conference that Rahul Bose was organising, I discussed it.”
{{/usCountry}}The actor also said that such incidents aren’t specific to Bollywood, but also exist in Hollywood. She continued, “When I went to Hollywood, there was this casting agent who wanted to look at the wrinkles on my face near my eyes.” It was after Dev D that someone referred to her as a ‘Russian prostitute’. She said, “It was after Dev D that I read someone had said, ‘Where did they get this Russian prostitute from?’ I was like, hey I’m not Russian.”
Kalki recently appeared in the second season of Netflix’s Sacred Games and in the original series Bhram, on Zee5. She is expecting her first child with partner Guy Hershberg, a classical pianist from Jerusalem, Israel.
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