Rithvik Dhanjani ‘froze’ when he faced casting couch at 20: ‘The moment he touched me, I was terrified’

What followed left him deeply shaken. He asked the man for the office address; the director insisted on coming with him and asked, “How did you come?” Rithvik answered, “On a bike.” The director then said, “Okay, I’ll sit behind you.” “I should have realised right then that something was wrong,” Rithvik said on the podcast Two Girls & Two Cups. “Someone so prominent should have a car, and if not a car, then at least a two-wheeler. He was sitting behind me on my bike, can you imagine?”

On the way, the man kept name-dropping people he claimed to have cast, and Rithvik found himself impressed. But when they reached the supposed office, anxiety set in. “I saw there were no offices, there was a grocery shop, a bun-maska stall. I kept thinking, ‘Does he really do casting here? That can’t be.’ He asked me to come inside and led me into a narrow lane; I assumed there might be a bungalow at the end. Instead, there was a gate with a huge lock. He opened it and inside it was completely dark, with stairs going up. He said, ‘Come up, this is my office.’ I swear I peed my pants, by then I had realised something was off, this is not right.”

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Upstairs, the director began asking about the kind of work Rithvik wanted. Naïve and hopeful, he showed his laptop and a CD containing his showreel. The man stopped the reel midway and told him, “You are a very hard worker.” When Rithvik agreed, the director replied, “In the industry, you don’t have to work hard, you have to work smart,” and then began touching him. “The moment he touched me, I froze. I was terrified inside, I was only 20 years old. I was shaking. Somehow, I managed to get out of there.”

Afterwards, he went straight to a friend and broke down. He was ready to quit the industry at that point. “My friend consoled me and said this happens in the industry, that it’s not a big deal. But it took me a long time to get over it,” he said. Asked whether things have changed in the post-#MeToo era, Rithvik answered with hope. “I really hope so. I want all these predators to be caught and I need people to speak up. Now, if I see a person like that I can thrash him very severely, that’s the kind of anger I have. That also comes as a trauma response, because back then I was helpless; I couldn’t do anything. If anything like this happens to anyone, they really need to speak up.”

Rithvik Dhanjani most recently hosted Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 11 in 2024.