10 October,2020 09:00 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Radhika Madan. Image sourced from mid-day archives
The age-old debate on nepotism has reinvigorated after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput on June 14, 2020. The debate has exploded on social media over the last few weeks and a lot of television and Hindi film actors have been talking about it and how Bollywood functions. Several celebrities have also spoken about the dark side of showbiz.
Actress Radhika Madan also opened up on the nepotism debate. The Angerzi Medium actress has faced the brunt of it quite early in her career. Speaking to Hindustan Times, Madan said, "We outsiders don't have the luxury of choice. When I started out, it wasn't like a line of scripts were lying with me and I could choose the best or zero in on the director or banner to debut with. Tab yeh tha ki jo ho raha hai aur achha lag raha hai, mujhe mil jaye bus. It's not as easy as an outsider. If I start talking about rejections this conversation might go on. I did lose project to a star kid but then my audition also didn't go well. But when you're told you're a good actor but not pretty enough at the age of 20, it shakes your confidence".
She added, "We've been conditioned for years as to how a hero/heroine should look like. And now, I take time to understand if the criticism is constructive or based on some preconditioning. It's not like someone is saying that you need to work on your skills and I would brush it off. I listen to everything and work on myself."
Reacting to the increased hostility towards Bollywood, Radhika said, "There are issues in every industry. But since ours is in the limelight, things get magnified. There are good and bad people everywhere. It all depends on how you move ahead with your capability. We don't need validation from outside to find our own calling. You don't need to explain yourself to everyone or believe everything people say. Find out for yourself what's right or wrong. Choose the company you keep wisely and just concentrate on your dream."
Also Read: Piyush Mishra On Nepotism: No Kapoor Or Khan Family Came In My Way
Radhika isn't the first actress to talk about nepotism. Recently, Mrunal Thakur explained how she faced the brunt of nepotism. She recalled two events - both at award shows where she was snubbed for being an outsider. "First, it happened to me at an Awards ceremony. I was getting the Critics Best Actress award for my film and after I went on stage, I was told, 'Ma'am, that's the exit!' Whereas at the same ceremony, when a star kid went up, they literally were shoving the mic in her face."
Apart from award organisers, she also raised an important point of how media treats people differently. She shared, "I was at this event giving interview bytes and suddenly, the entire media ran away because a star kid arrived. That poor girl couldn't even handle her outfit properly and the media was just all over."
A few days back, actress Urmila Matondkar narrated how nepotism had almost destroyed her career. Talking about it, the Satya actress said, "This word called 'nepotism', if I start talking about it, I will have to talk for quite a few hours. The amount of it that I have faced, in spite of being from Mumbai, was quite alarming, to say the least. There were some 16-17 new girls who were introduced that year and out of them, some eight or nine of them were somebody or the other's daughters. I will tell you a few of them - Raveena Tandon, Karisma Kapoor, Pooja Bhatt, Kajol, lots of them."
She added, "After my first film, I made a decent name for myself as a good dancer and a decent actor, and yet, I struggled tremendously. By the time I was doing Rangeela, I was written off like no other actor in the history of cinema. 'She makes faces', 'her language'... everything."
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