Actor Ankita Lokhande rose to fame with her hit television show, ‘Pavitra Rishta’. However, do you know she wanted to start her career as a film actress, but faced casting couch early in her career?
In a recent chat with Hauterrfly, the actress revealed how a film producer offered to cast her in his south Indian film only if she agreed to “sleep with him.” Sharing how she had met a filmmaker in a Mumbai hotel after she got a call from him, Ankita said, “I had given an audition, I got a call saying, ‘You have been selected.’ I was supposed to go to sign and I told them, ‘Yes, I will come to the hotel.’ I even told my mother excitedly, ‘I am going and I will get the signing amount’.”
However, when she reached the hotel, she was asked to compromise. “I was just 19 at that time. At that time, it was like ‘I want to be a heroine and that phase was on.’ I played smart because I did not want to hear that I had to sleep with someone. So I asked them, ‘What kind of a compromise? Do you want me to go to a party with your producers, finances?’ So I played it very smart so that I don’t get to hear what they were supposed to say,” the actor shared.
She was then told, “You have to sleep with the producer.” After hearing it, Ankita lashed out at the person, saying, “I don’t think your producer needs talent, they need a girl to sleep with and I am not that one.”
In fact, that’s when she decided not to work in Bollywood, and stay happy with the TV industry. “That day I realised this industry or anywhere, I cannot give anyone the right to any person who can ask me that I have to sleep with them. I felt so low about myself that how could someone say this to me? That day I decided I was not going to do films. I don’t want to do films. Because I don’t give rights to anyone, it’s dirty and then I decided whatever happens, I am happy with my Television industry. After that, I got this opportunity from Pavitra Rishta and I happily did that,” Ankita shared.
Ankita forayed into Bollywood with Kangana Ranaut’s 2019 film ‘Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi’. She will next be seen in ‘Swatantra Veer Savarkar’, which stars Randeep Hooda.
