Pretty real. Particularly for girls. Girls would really, really struggle with this, apparently even the famous Indian ones, but certainly the white ones. Continually get taken out to dinner by a 'producer' who wanted to talk about a role for a film; and the dinner would be in the Marriot or somewhere where he'd already taken a room upstairs. As far as I could tell the only real way around it for girls was to make do with small roles or get hitched with someone quite famous.
For guys, I didn't deal with much except when I did any modelling. I mean, except for people getting handsy on-set, which was kinda common (I was touched up two, maybe three times). But in modelling it's explicit as f**k.
Story time: I was on set for a film, and a really famous fashion designer was there because he was friends with the director or someone. He's there, just checking things out and drinking chai and stuff. Anyway, he starts talking to me about whether I want to do modelling and I said "I suck at it, but a ramp show does seem like a lot of fun", so he takes my name and connects with me on FB. That night, he starts sending some pretty crazy explicit messages, basically saying "If you don't f**k me/suck me off, you ain't getting any work" (just with him, not threatening to ruin my career I should add). I mentioned it to an Iranian guy the next day on another set for another thing, he was a model, and he unloaded. Said his agent was about to send him back to Iran because he wouldn't 'play ball' and as a result wasn't getting any ramp work. Said it was pretty much the understood thing that if you wanted to get ramp shows and serious modelling work, you pretty much had to bend over for it; then recounted about seven or eight really dodgy incidents which were kinda rapey as f**k.
Q.Are any of the actors in Bollywood down to earth or are they stubborn?
Some of them are lovely. Some are epically stubborn and vain and kinda rude. Just the same as normal people.
Except, I guess, there's a kind of status that comes with being a dick - like if you're able to be that rude/picky/whatever, you must be famous. So I think people milk that by being dicks. I know for a fact I was edited out of at least one scene because the lead actor turned up at editing and demanded that happen; and in the scene in Dostana (posted elsewhere in this AMA) I later found out that the reason we weren't standing together in the scene (me with John Abraham and Abhishek Bachchan) was because the didn't like that I was so tall I was making Abhishek look short - so inexplicably they're over the other side of the stage and the camera needs to whip-pan to them when I talk about them.
Q.Isn't Abhishek 6'1? How tall are you?
That's what he claims, but he ain't. I think he's about 5'10"
Q.Worst experience with a famous Indian actor? Btw best and realist ama I've seen in a while
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