Raveena Tandon recalls when co-star’s girlfriend forbid him to speak with her, says ‘very big OTT platform’s executive’ disrespected her

She said, “Though it was prevalent in the 90s, definitely, there was a film that was offered to me, and the original star-cast was another very big hit pair. I was a hit pair with another person. Unfortunately for me, that person, who was my co-star in a couple of films, started dating a heroine who couldn’t stand me. She had this competitive, jealousy, rivalry with me. She told him, ‘If I see you talking to her I will dump you, you can’t do more films with her’. And we were a hit pair. He told me also, ‘When she comes on the sets I’m not going to talk to you’. I said, ‘Why? You know who I’m dating, I’m dating someone else.’ Suddenly, one day, I was told, ‘Sorry, you’ll have to leave these films because he doesn’t want to work with you anymore’.”

As luck would have it, Raveena recalled, the co-star who’d recommended his girlfriend as her replacement was himself dropped by the producer, because the replacement didn’t fit the part, and the male actor wouldn’t agree to the film without her.

I remember another very popular film director came up to me, and he was in love with his heroine. He’d signed me opposite Sunny for some film. He came to my house and said, ‘You’re like my younger sister, but you know I’m madly in love with her and she’ll kill me if I sign someone else. Help me make my relationship work.’ I said, ‘No problem, I’ll step out of the film’. And she got the role. That film kind of did well.

While discussing ‘cancel culture’, Raveena narrated her encounter with a streaming platform’s executive, whom she said gave her very bad vibes. “I have faced this from a very big OTT organisation, where I didn’t realise what that woman had against me. As soon as she walked into the room and saw me, she had these bad vibrations. She just turned around, sat like this (Raveena averted eye-contact), and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll hear your story in a bit. This is not what we’re looking for’. She actually gave me that attitude. And till date, I haven’t worked for that OTT platform, till she’s there. That time, I was in shock.

The same person, Raveena said, ignored her on a flight. “Because of my political preferences and my political views, I faced this treatment from this woman. And she’s a complete leftist, I think, which I got to know much later,” she said. Raveena made her streaming debut with the Netflix series Aranyak. She is also collaborating with Akshaye Khanna on an upcoming web series.