Sana Khan on casting couch: You cannot be in the sea and fight with sharks

Bollywood celebs admitted that casting couch exists in the Hindi film industry as well like Hollywood when the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke out. However, addressing the larger issue about why nobody is naming anyone in particular, actress Sana Khan, who was part of movies such as the Salman Khan-starrer ‘Jai Ho’, ‘Wajah Tum Ho’, and the Akshay Kumar-starrer ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’, expressed, “You cannot be in the sea and fight with sharks.”


She further said, “It’s not that there are only cheap people; there are some nice ones too, so you often ignore and move on with hope. You don’t want to take a name and get into controversy because then, people will talk less about your acting and more about the incident. And unfortunately, even good people will run away from casting you in films.”


She also added, “Obviously, there have been many times when people [in the film industry] made such advances. I feel it happens more with people who are complete outsiders in this industry — people like me, absolutely alien. You meet coordinators and they take you to these hotels and ask you random things. It took me months or maybe a year to understand that there are so many cheap men out there who would ask you to ‘compromise’ or ‘oblige’. Kitni funny baat hai na ki humne school mein jo in words ka meaning padha tha, woh toh kuch alag hi tha (Funny how we were taught some other meanings for these words in school).”


The actress admitted that initially, she would get confused, she said, “And I even used to ask them (coordinators) what they are talking about. I used to wonder how one word can be used in so many different contexts. I was talking to one of my fellow girls that do we have more such words or are we done? I also heard things like ‘you should build a relationship for work’, ‘you should go out and meet more people and tell them you want to work’.”


She concluded by saying, “Lot of times you get to hear ‘sorry, we couldn’t do anything because you didn’t do this’. So, irrespective of your talent and professionalism, a lot of people don’t want you because you’re not giving them what they want and hence, you move at a tortoise’s speed.”