A director wanted to see how I look in a nightie: Mahie Gill

Bold, courageous, confident — that’s how Mahie Gill is portrayed on screen. But in real life, the actor says she is quite the opposite. However, her shy nature hasn’t stopped her from talking about how she faced the casting couch during her initial days in the film industry.

The actor reveals that people have tried to make indecent advances to her in return for work. “It happened with me a few times. I don’t even remember the name of the directors. I had to meet a director, so I wore a [salwar] suit, and he told me, ‘If you wear a suit and come, nobody is going to cast you in a film’. Then, I met another director, and he said, ‘I want to see how you look in a nightie’. There are idiots all around.”

Mahie adds that such incidents confused her about how things worked in the industry. “I was so new to Mumbai, so I didn’t know who was right and who wasn’t. And when people know that you are new to the industry and struggling, you tend to listen to them. I mean, I actually started thinking, ‘Achha, aisa hota hai ki suit pehnne se role nahi milte aur koi kaam nahi dega’. It’s very difficult to meet the right kind of people,” adds Mahie, who will next be seen in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster 3.

Asked how she managed to avoid such traps, Mahie says, “I was anyway nervous while meeting people, so whenever someone tried to give me dumb logic or guide me in any way, I used to run away.”

The actor admits that “it really affects” one’s state of mind. “After all this, you don’t know who to meet, how to meet them. There was a point when I stopped meeting people in their offices and I even used to take a friend along with me so that people didn’t try to act smart. But then, you want money also, so, I started doing some serials also on Doordarshan,” says the actor, who made her debut with Dev D (2009).