Suhasini Maniratnam says Mani Ratnam fired a crew member for ‘crossing the line’ on his set: ‘He said most of the people should be thrown out’

“In a normal unit, who are these 200 people who are there? There will be certain aberrations or some people who will take advantage of the fact that they are away from family. There are younger people in the industry, who are not experienced about how the industry functions, so they might take advantage,” she added.

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Suhasini shared that when she asked her husband, director Mani Ratnam, as to how he handles situations “where people cross a line”, he said that he fires those people. “I asked my husband this morning, ‘What do you do?’, he gave me the name of a person that he threw out of the set because he crossed a certain line. After that he said, ‘Most of the people should be thrown out’. If 200 people will be there in a village without any rules, there will be lines that are crossed. That is where the problem is. Even in the Malayalam industry, it’s the same thing,” she said.

Suhasini implied that most Tamil films are shot in Chennai, Kannada films in Bengaluru, Telugu films in Hyderabad and Hindi films in Mumbai, while also insisting that Malayalam films aren’t shot in a particular place so the crew does not get to go home and have to stay on outdoor shoots for longer periods. “In Tamil films, we go back home to Chennai, in Telugu films, we go back home to Hyderabad, in Kannada films, we go back home to Bangalore, and in Hindi films, you go back home to Mumbai. But in Malayalam films, they don’t go back home, because there is no particular place. So, there were lines that were crossed,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Hema Committee Report exposed how women in the Malayalam film were treated unfairly and harassed in the industry.