Actor Maanvi Gagroo, who started her career with the daily-soap Dhoom Machao Dhoom in 2007 and rose to fame with her role as “Chanchal” in TVF Tripling, is now geared up for the release of Four More Shots Please! Season 2 on Amazon Prime which is set to release on April 17. She has constellated a lot of critical acclaim for her roles in popular Bollywood movies Ujda Chaman and Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan.
In a recent interview, Maanvi Gagroo has dished the dirt on a sordid casting couch experience that she once had to endure where a person who referred to himself as the producer of an un-named web series called her to offer a role in his upcoming web show, but at a low budget. Upon further negotiation, the man ended up asking her to compromise or ‘compro’, as the man audaciously referred to it, in return for a triple salary.
“A year ago, I got a call from a random unknown number. They were like ‘we’re doing a web series and we wanted to cast you.’ They told me the budget and I said, ‘nai nai yaar, this is too less and why are we talking about the budget? Tell me the script, only if I’m interested and you are interested in roping me, we can discuss about money, dates and all.’ So he’s like, ‘we’re asking people if they are okay with the budget.’ When I said ‘nahi, it’s less’, he tripled the budget just in his next sentence. He said, ‘I can give you this much also, but aapko ‘compro’ (compromise) karna padega.’” she recapitulated.
Further revealing her reaction to the incident, Manvi Gagroo added, “These words ‘compro’, ‘compromise’ I was hearing after 7-8 years. Suddenly, I don’t know what triggered me, I started abusing him. Told him ‘aap phone rakho, how dare you? Mai police ko complaint kar rahi hu’. I was really mad because in this pro imposed #MeToo era, I was baffled at how things like this still happen.”
As Gagroo rightly pointed out, it’s really discombobulating for us as a society how such predators feel empowered to plot out such vile misadventures. Only the setting up of a strict code of conduct & social pressure within the industry’s circles can rid the industry and the society, at large, of such abject misbehaviour.
WRITTEN BY AISHA SINGH
(Class 12th, St. Joseph’s Convent High School, Patna)
Fresh out of school, Aisha is a law aspirant. When not with her books or paintbrushes, you can find her acquiring random knowledge off the internet or picking wildflowers off the sidewalk.
