Neena Gupta recalls casting couch incident that made her blood freeze: ‘Aren’t you going to spend the night?’

Neena Gupta in her recently released autobiography wrote about many unsavoury incidents that she experienced in the film industry, one of which saw a producer making an indecent proposal to her.

Neena Gupta’s autobiography, Sach Kahun Toh, was launched by actor Kareena Kapoor earlier this week. She wrote about an incident when her ‘blood froze’ after a producer called her up to his hotel room and suggested she spend the night there.

According to a Zoom report, Neena got a call from the producer, who worked in the south Indian film industry, to meet him. She wrapped up her performance at Prithvi theatre in Mumbai’s Juhu, and because the hotel was nearby, decided to pay the producer a visit. But when the producer called her up to his room, she feared something was amiss. “My basic instinct told me to not go upstairs. That I should ask him to come down to the lobby instead,” she wrote.

But afraid to lose out on the opportunity, she went up anyway. He proceeded to talk to her about the many actors he’d launched for hours, but when he told her about the role she was being considered for, Neena wasn’t interested.

“‘So, what’s my role, sir?’ I asked him finally when he paused to catch his breath. ‘The heroine’s friend,’ he said. When he explained it to me, it seemed like a very small part. ‘Ok … I have to go now, sir’ I said, ‘My friends are waiting for me.’….’Go? Where? he asked. He seemed genuinely shocked. Aren’t you going to spend the night here?’ Suddenly, I felt like someone had just poured a bucket of ice water on my head. Khoon sookh gaya (My blood froze),” the actor wrote. The producer thrust her bag in her arms and told her that she wasn’t being forced to do anything, following which Neena ran out.

Also read: Neena Gupta recalls feeling embarrassed after Subhash Ghai demanded she wear ‘padded bra’ for Choli Ke Peeche

Neena has also written about the many trials and tribulations that she faced on movie sets, as a veteran actor in the film industry. She wrote about director David Dhawan making her cry in front of the crew and Juhi Chawla consoling her, and about Subhash Ghai leaving her embarrassed after demanding that she wear a ‘heavily padded bra’ for the Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai song sequence in the film Khal Nayak.

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PUBLISHED ON JUN 17, 2021 07:10 AM IST

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UPDATED ON JUN 16, 2021 07:40 PM IST

• Neena Gupta recalled feeling embarrassed after director Subhash Ghai demanded that she wear a ‘heavily padded bra’ for Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai, and yelling, “kuch bharo (fill it up).”