Akshay Kumar’s co-star Shanthi Priya recalls his derogatory comment on her skin colour: ‘He said see how dark it is, everybody laughed’

“With Akshay, in Ikke Pe Ikka, it was the climax scene and we were shooting in a mill. I was wearing a short dress because she (her character) was a glamour girl. I was wearing a fit short dress and skin tones stockings and my knees were a little on the darker side. So, he just… He does a lot of masti (fun), that’s one thing. You do masti, but when there are a hundred hundred people then you cannot just randomly come and (say things). He asked, ‘Shanti, you got hurt on your knees?’, and I was checking and then he said ‘see how dark it is’ and everybody laughed.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Shanthi Priya (@shanthipriya333)

Speaking about body shaming in those days, the actor said that producers in the south wanted to cast “nice plump girls.” “In the 90’s there was no body shaming. They wanted nice plump girls, down south at least. Whenever they wanted a slim and trim girl, then they would come to Bombay and pick the girls from here and they would be the glam side, the Bombay girls did that. Otherwise the girls were nice ‘hatta katta girls’ (healthy) down south and they (were) accepted. They would wear nice Amrapali dress, I’ve done a couple of movies, my sister (Bhanupriya) has done a lot of movies. We never had zero figure or XS or S, nothing like that.”