Surveen Chawla Recounts her Casting Couch Experiences: Filmmakers Wanted To See My Cleavage, Thighs
Actor Surveen Chawla recently opened up about her casting couch experience. The Sacred Games’ actor revealed that she has faced five such experiences.
Actor Surveen Chawla recently opened up about her casting couch experience. The Sacred Games’ actor revealed that she has faced five such experiences – three in the South film industry and two in Bollywood. After making her TV debut with Ekta Kapoor’s Kahiin To Hoga, Surveen faced difficult challenges in her career. Speaking in an interview, she said, “Then came south and that was my biggest blow. I faced casting couch thrice. There was a time I was told to accompany a film director for a recce and I was told ‘I want to know every inch of your body’. I just started ignoring calls from then on.”
Recounting another horrifying incident, Surveen said, “This was another ridiculously big director down south, a National Award-winning director. I had a very long audition there, it almost lasted a shift. I had to do various things – a monologue or saying something impromptu. I was unwell and I returned after the audition. Then the director suddenly offered to come to Mumbai as I was unwell. I found it very creepy and said ‘no, thank you’.”
She continued, “On the same phone call, in which I was not speaking to the director as he could only speak Tamil and no English or Hindi. He spoke to me through someone, maybe a friend. That person told me on the phone that ‘sir needs to know you, he needs to understand you as this film will take a long time to make’. And then he jumped to ‘only till the film and then you can stop’. I very innocently asked him ‘stop what’. So, he said ‘just till the film this will go on; then you can stop’. I still remember my words. I told him that you are knocking on the wrong door. If sir thinks I am talented then I am still willing to work in his film but I cannot barter myself. And that film also didn’t happen.”
Surveen has faced such incidents until recently. She said, “It happened quite recently, last to last year. I had to barge out of an office because of someone trying to insinuate an act and I will never do that,” she went on to add, “One filmmaker to see how my cleavage looks and one filmmaker wants to see how my thighs looked. This kind of stuff happens.” Surveen was last seen in the Emmy nominated Netflix original series, Sacred Games, playing the character of Jojo Mascarenas. She was lauded for her performance in the web series.
