E-Paper
Radhika Apte on the rise of toxic characters in Bollywood: I'm sick of power and control being called love
Radhika Apte discusses how control and power is often shown as passionate love in Hindi films and the need to stop this glorification on screen
The rise of toxic, alpha characters on the big screen in Hindi cinema has been a topic of discussion since films like Animal (2023), and more recently Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat and Tere Ishk Mein (2025) have done well at the box office. In her recent film Saali Mohabbat, actor Radhika Apte also played a character who commits a murder as her husband cheats on her. However, the actor insists that such acts should not be glorified and seen as acts of passionate love.
“That's the problem. I don't think that in the film, what happens is something happening out of passionate love. It's happening because of accumulated acute injustice and treatment of her. I don't like to glorify that as some passionate love for the partner or anybody else in the world. This is where we go wrong on how we view it. It's clearly happening from being treated badly over and over again,” Radhika Apte says.
The actor adds, “In our culture, these acts are mistaken as love, we call it love. But it's not really love when we have to compromise our happiness repeatedly to please somebody. You can't call it love. I don't agree with the notion.”
Radhika insists that Bollywood often shows control as passion, and that is not right. “Whether it's husband or husband's family or your parents, listening to them and doing whatever they want you to do, is not love. If anybody expects the other person to compromise their happiness, to do what you ask them to do, that's not love. True love is to see the other person happy and obedience is not love. That's just power and control. And I'm sick of it being called as love or respect,” she says.
Asking the Hindi film industry to stop glorifying such stories, the actor says, “It's awful and horrible. I think we should stop making these films and telling these stories. We are glorifying obsession and controlled power as passion and that's a big mistake.”
