Last month, popular 90s actress Shanti Priya said that Akshay Kumar made a derogatory comment about her skin colour during the filming of Ikke Pe Ikka. The actress said that he made fun of her ‘dark knees’ in front of the team of the film and everyone around her laughed. Shanti has now gone in depth about the incident and said that she went into depression after the incident. She said while she had her mother’s support, she went into a shell. She added that back in those days, actresses wore beige stockings. After the incident, she began wearing double stockings to cover her colour.
“I must be 22-23 at the time. Yes, I went into a depression. My mom was a strong pillar for us because we already faced these things in our industry, whether it is down South or in Hindi. My sister (Bhanupriya) also faced it a lot. Didi used to do Hindi movies. There were a couple of magazines in the Hindi industry where they wrote about Didi when she had pimples, (the magazines) used to say that how much ever pimples she had, that much amount she charges for a movie. I was like ‘What?’ We went through a lot because of our colours. Even now, my sons go through it,” Shanti said in an interview with Siddharth Kannan.
When asked if she spoke to Akshay about the incident after he passed the comment, she confessed, “I was not able to talk to him that comfortably. And I think it was my second last day (on set). It was the climax scene and picture khatam ho gaya tha.” After the comment was made, Shanti recalled, that the crew laughed with Akshay when he made the comment. However, upon seeing her reaction, they realised that she didn’t take the statement as a joke and understood the seriousness of the moment.
She added that Akshay did not apologise to her but he clarified that he was making a joke. “He has not apologised but he told me, ‘I was just joking, come on man, don’t take seriously, main bus mazak masti kar raha tha.’ I said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ But he has come and spoken to me. He didn’t apologised like ‘I’m really very sorry if I hurt you in any manner’, not that way. But he just told, ‘It was just in a flow and I was just joking. That’s all. You know no, main masti karta hoon.’ It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I touched something very sensitive, I should have not told that.’ It wasn’t that kind,” she recalled.
Shanti took a break from acting after 1994. She appeared in a few shows thereafter but chose to stay away from the cameras. However, in 2014, the actress decided to make her comeback and one of the first people she called was Akshay. The actress revealed she had met him on the sets of his film Holiday and spoke for hours. At the time, she held no grudges against him for the incident.
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