After Fatima, Another Bollywood Actress Reveals Casting Couch In South

Casting Couch is one of the major concerning issues in the film industry. Of late, we have been hearing many cases like the MeToo movement and the Hema Committee Report, only to realise that there is a dark side to the entertainment industry. Recently, Bollywood actress Fatima Sana Sheikh opened up on casting couch incidents she faced in the South. Now, another Hindi actress Kirti Kulhari also revealed one such incident she faced down the South.

Speaking in a recent podcast, Kirti said that until she faced such an incident, she never knew about the casting couch but heard a lot about it.

She said, “I remember I went to this meeting and this person said something. I reconfirmed whether is this the moment he is going to ask me about that thing I have been hearing forever. I asked whether he meant casting couch. He was like ‘yeah’. After hearing that, I had a giggle inside my head because I had heard about it all my life and I realised is that how it happens. I immediately told him ‘no’.”

Dark reality of south/Bollywood actresses.. you have to compromise(sleep)with director if you want to work in Bollywood industry.
?/2 pic.twitter.com/ZFQQQlZJu2

— Ashman kumar Larokar (@ashmanchillguy) February 5, 2025

“I was amused by it but surprisingly, not offended by it thinking how can he ask me like that. Maybe because I heard about the casting couch all the time and it happened in such a funny way that I couldn’t register it because it wasn’t serious. People often think that it is prevalent everywhere and you have to do it to get offers, which I think is absolute b*s**t. When it happened to me, I was like no that’s not an option. But okay, at least I have a story to tell that even I had to go through it,” she added.

With Bollywood actresses opening up about casting couches down the south, the reputation of South Indian film industries is slowly being questioned on social media and mainstream media.

Kirti Kulhari is known for acting in films like Pink, Shaitan, Mission Mangal, Prime Video’s Web Series Four More Shots Please, Netflix’s Web Series Bard of Blood and Hotstar’s Web Shows Criminal Justice and Shekhar Home. She was recently seen in Zee5’s original film Hisaab Baraabar and Himesh Reshammiya’s Badass Ravi Kumar.