Directors wanted to see my cleavage, thighs: Surveen Chawla
Actors sharing their stories of struggle or of the times when they were taken undue advantage of, have always started a conversation. And one of the several actors who have exposed filmmakers, accusing them of making indecent advances, is Surveen Chawla, who has now come out and opened up on casting couch incidents she faced in the industry.
“There was a time when a director wanted to see how my cleavage looked and another wanted to see how my thighs looked,” she told Pinkvilla.
The Hate Story 2 (2014) actor, who started her showbiz journey with the TV show Kahiin to Hoga and went on to do films in Bollywood and regional film industries, says that she had to face the casting couch five times — thrice in the south Indian film industry and twice in Bollywood. She also recollects the time when she was once called overweight. “I went to give this audition and the person told me, ‘You are overweight’. I was just 56kg and I thought the person needed glasses,” she quips.
One might think that her experience in television industry would have made things easier for her, but sadly that wasn’t the case. “Yes, there was a time when people told me you are overexposed because of television. For sometime, I tried to hide it from producers and tell them I did TV only for a year, but I realised later ‘Why am I doing this?’ Isn’t it going to be easier for a team to get someone who already knows how to do their lines?” she adds.