Radhika-Apte-Rajeev-MasandThe most hot and happening actress in Bollywood at present is Radhika Apte who did films in five regional languages aka Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali besides Bollywood movies. In Rajeev Masand’s interview Radhika spoke at length about her regional movie ventures.

Her words reveal her respect for regional movie and how she did regional movies on the insistence of passionate people like Prakash Raj ( Dhoni in Tamil), Sujoy Ghosh (short film in Bengali), Fahad Fasil (Malayalam), and mother tongue Marathi films.

But coming to Telugu films, Radhika seems to have tasted a bitter pill in TFI. She has done only three Telugu films. One is Prakash Raj’s bilingual ‘Dhoni’ and the other two are with Balakrishna’s in ‘Legend’ and ‘Lion’. One can see the expression of disgust and annoyance on her face while speaking about Telugu films.

In her own words, Radhika said, “I think the one industry that I’ve struggled with most is Telugu. That industry is so..so…patrialchal, male chauvinist. I mean it’s unbearable the way women are treated. Even their part in films is like ‘My my, He’s my God!’. On sets you are treated like one … some third person.”

Speaking on the behaviour of hero, Radhika says, “And the actor (hero)… they don’t even ask the actor anything because the actor’s mood is right now like ‘he wants to have chai or something’. I’ve constantly struggled and put an end to it.” Who is she pointing fingers at? She has paired up with only Balakrishna for 2 films in Telugu.

What she spoke looks like an open secret that our industry is male dominated where star heroes have the final word. The way she took the names of other regional film industries with reverence and only looked down on Telugu shows the sorry state of affairs in TFI. Does all her speech mean she’s going to do no more films in Telugu?