EXCLUSIVE: Sayantani Ghosh shares horrific casting couch experiences: This big producer-director said we should spend time and get to know each other

While the entertainment shines bright with glitz and glam, there is a dark side too, which is called the casting couch preying on the innocent dreamers trying to make it into Bollywood or TV. Many actresses and actors have come forwards spoken about their casting couch experience. We sat down for an exclusive chat with Naagin actress Sayantani Ghosh when she opened up about her uncomfortable casting couch experience with a director.

Narrating her casting couch experience Sayantani told Bollywood Bubble, “I’ll be very honest I haven’t had to deal with many casting people because such has been my route. When I came to Mumbai work, lead me onto another work. Also, in the initial years, this whole designation of casting directors wasn’t there. So it was creatives, the channel and the producer. So I really didn’t have to face a lot of casting people. because primarily I did television, after 4-5 years I was established enough for people to reach out to me directly.”

The Naagin actress continued, “But initially, there must have been incidents where people must have made a move at me. But I was very young and naive even to realise that someone is making that kind of move. But there was one particular incident when I remember which was probably the first or second time it happened. It was one of my Bengali movies, I don’t come from an acting background neither have I trained myself. So I was told that I will have to do workshops and do script reading sessions which is a part and parcel of our profession. Where to do? These days there are halls, this was back in 2003 or 2004. This was Kolkata, and there we all live in old houses, now the flat culture has come up. We had an empty flat so my mother suggested we do it there. This person who was heading the script said ‘Fine, but I will appreciate only you and me. Dont want your mother or anyone around.’ I am 18-19 then, my mother will obviously be around. That person said ‘No, I need time with you otherwise how do I train you.'”

But Sayantani’s mother was always on set and the person took the cue to back off, “Then probably I didn’t understand the meaning of it and it was a couple of years later that it was his way of communicating that I don’t want people around. I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable, I remember putting this point across to my director. But also a lot of times you are scared, a newcomer, a nobody also a woman. So throughout I was living in this fear that they don’t remove me from the movie. Thankfully nothing happened, my mother’s presence made the message loud and clear to the person. But during one of the outdoor shoots, I told my director that this is happening and I am uncomfortable. So if you put me through any more script sessions, ensure that there’s another person.”

 

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Sayantani also said that she had faced such an uncomfortable situation after she moved to Mumbai as well, “I have also faced it in Mumbai, I remember one of my television events I was performing and I had this person who belongs to the movie industry, he saw me and another friend of mine and said ‘You dance so much better than the other people, you have such presence, why don’t you’ll try for films’. This is a time when webseries didn’t exist. Anybody will be excited when a noted personality said that you’ll should try out. So I went with my portfolio, the meeting time was 3 pm and it kept on getting delayed till 8 pm. You call it conservative or not these are a few things I always followed that not doing work meetings beyond a certain hour. Not because I don’t trust the other person but how else do you function. So I had to respectfully bow out, maybe he understood so the next meeting was based at 3 pm, he saw the photos and he said ‘You’re very photogenic, I have seen you dance’. He took a name of a big actress who had said that she is like that in her real life and this was the role she had done. I know she could take on the role and since I spent so much time with her I could tweak her mannerisms to suit her. Then came the bottom line when he said, ‘i think we should spend more time and get to know each other’.”

Check out the full conversation with Sayantani Ghosh below:

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