Suhasini Maniratnam wanted to call top Bollywood actors and tell them to not do bold content, friend Poonam Dhillon replied, ‘Keep quiet, stay in Madras’

Agreeing that she has done this at times, the actor-director said that she once called friend Poonam Dhillon, saying she’d like to have a word with top actors in Bollywood. She also cautioned how this bold content is not suited for society to watch. However, Poonam had a different take on her suggestion and asked her to “stay in Madras”.

“We were looking at an OTT platform where it was really, really explicit. And I was wondering how did they get the courage to do scenes like this which are not accepted by society or the censors or by law? I said they must have seen mainstream films where scenes are very bold and top people are doing it. So I called Poonam Dhillon and said, ‘Shall I come and talk to all the leading heroes and heroines in Bombay and tell them, ‘Don’t do scenes like this because you’re encouraging something which is illegal, by somebody who’s misinterpreting the freedom, artistic freedom that you have.’ And she said, ‘Keep quiet and stay in Madras, don’t come,'” Suhasini recalled.

The actor shared that because she is in a position of control, when she sees something like this, it breaks her heart. “When I see things going totally wrong because of some freedom that has been taken, which is interpreted wrong by somebody else, you will slowly come to know because it’s going to be in papers about this platform where everything is so explicit and it’s so available. And it really breaks my heart to see something like this,” she said.

Suhasini Maniratnam refrained from naming the platform but shared that it was formed in 2018, and grew during the pandemic because it pushed porn content. “It’s pornography but it’s freely available. And it’s so difficult to stop it because people haven’t reported about it. They’re consuming it, but they haven’t reported about it,” she said, adding that it’s important people are advised what to watch as art should not be represented this way.