Esha Gupta Recalls Her Casting Couch Ordeal: “I Saw A Very Dirty Side”

Actress Esha Gupta, in an exclusive interview with Bollywood Bubble, opened up about her ordeal with the casting couch when a filmmaker and a producer made sexual advances towards her during the shooting of a film.

Esha made her debut in Bollywood with Kunal Deshmukh’s Jannat 2, co-starring Emraan Hashmi and Randeep Hooda, in 2012. The 35-year-old actress told Bollywood Bubble that she has faced the casting couch twice – first when a filmmaker asked her for sexual favours but she refused.

Recalling her experience of casting couch, Esha Gupta told Bollywood Bubble: “Two people, they’ve done that to me. One of them, well I did the film still. Because it was a little sly move. I think they also expected an outdoor shoot, we’ll just be really nice to her, things may change then. But I am also really smart, I said I am not going to sleep alone.”

“I used to make my makeup artist sleep in the room with me. I said ‘Oh I am scared, I won’t sleep’. But, it’s not the ghosts that you are scared of, it’s the person. Because you never know when they…You also don’t want to be disrespectful.

But the problem is also they only do it to us, they won’t do it to the industry kids because there their parents will come and kill you. But to us, they would do thinking she wants work. So eventually I saw a very dirty side of the person I worked with because they became very vindictive when they realised that ‘shit she is not going to do anything’. Because that is the only film where my mother also went with me,” she added.

Esha Gupta said that after she refused his sexual advances, the filmmaker “got very vindictive, very negative with her.” She told the publication: “Usually, I call my parents at an outdoor shoot, just in between but not the whole film. So that person got very vindictive, very negative with me. I mean but the result of that film was…there is karma always. That was a bad experience.”

Esha Gupta has starred in films such as Rustom, Commando 2, Total Dhamaal and Humshakals among others.

In the same interview, she added that while filming a movie, a producer wanted to throw her out of the film because she had refused him sexual favours. “Then there was where halfway through the film, the co-producer told the maker of the film, ‘I don’t want her in the movie. Why is she there?’ This is after 4-5 days of starting the shoot.

He said, ‘No she is my Heroine.’ The maker came to me and asked ‘Did this happen with this guy?’ and I looked at him and laughed saying yes sir,” the actress said and added: “There are also people who don’t give me work because they say, ‘She is not going to do anything, what’s the point?’ But you realise that you make your own way.”

Esha Gupta was last seen in One Day: Justice Delivered, Esha Gupta’s upcoming projects are Desi Magic and Hera Pheri 3.