Sonali Bendre on the #MeToo movement: 'Would have had more respect if...'

Sonali Bendre

The #MeToo that started in the west also found its way to India in 2018 outing several names from the show business. It was a major moment that spoke about the harassment faced by individuals by people in power in the show business. Bollywood actress Sonali Bendre recently spoke about the movement and the role of journalists during a conversation on Mid-day's The Bombay Film Podcast.

While Sonali is glad that the moment took place, she said that she would respect it more had it been happening across professions. "Me Too movement has two aspects. I'm glad that the Me Too movement did start but what about other professions. I genuinely believe that we are so much in the public eye that the me too, in that sense is so much more curtailed here than it is in professions that you don't even know. You don't talk about it the police officers, you don't talk about it in the lawyers or in the courtrooms, you don't talk about it in the corporate world. Yes, they're powerful people," she said.

She added, "It's so easy to talk about film and film people. They are soft targets. I would have more respect for the movement if it went across equally for everything and everybody who actually went through it. Then I would have more respect for it."

On her equation with journalists:

Talking about her equation with journalists, Sonali shared, "From my point of view, most of the time I saw them as adversaries. They were always on your set and usually were catering to somebody on the set. Hence they were definitely not catering to me. It never served the purpose to put my point of view across or that I could have one. So I've had a very adversarial equation with the journalists."

However, after playing the role of a news anchor in 'The Broken News', her perception about the profession and what journalists have to go through changed. "But today, after doing Broken News, I really understand the kind of pressures that journalists go through. What is being read is what we need to provide. A rookie reporter probably will take a story to the editor who will say, 'yeh kya boring cheez hai, yeh affair kiske saath hai woh lao'. It will probably be thrown at them. So I understand that now and so there's a lot of respect," she said.