Her recent venture ‘Masaan’ has garnered success at both the Box Office and with the Critiques. She is known to play bold and strong female characters. But, Richa Chadha doesn’t let the success sabotage her from being on the ground.

After being in the limelight for long, Does she believe in the term“Political correctness?! And she says, I’ve never been able to be that way!”.

In that vein, Chadha speaks about her encounters with the Press in India, while talking about her experience at the Cannes International Film Festival this year.
She has earlier said that she’s ‘spoilt by the international attention’ that she’s receiving these days.

“Yes... because they really respect actors. They see actors in a very different way. It is unlike what we see here. Sometimes, I feel like the Press here just wants a bad bite.

"They poke you to say something, and that’s it. It happened to me recently, where someone asked me something about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Selfie With Daughter’ initiative. I said it’s sweet, and then they kept on probing me, and finally it became a news (the ‘headline’ being ‘Selfie With Daughter is sweet, but women’s problems can’t be solved with a selfie, says Richa Chadha,’ and then on the trolls got me on Twitter,” says Richa.

“It’s so sad that actors don’t have the freedom to say what they want to. But any common person can get on Twitter and abuse us left, right and centre, not leave your sisters and brothers and mother and father and upbringing, and get away with it.

"There was a retired Colonel who called me a prostitute, after reading the ‘Selfie With Daughter’ misquoted story.”

"And I was like, ‘Wow, we’re really a classy nation!’ A man who’s older than my father can just wake up and start saying whatever the hell he wants to, but I cannot. You know, even if I was critical of that (the ‘Selfie With Daughter’ initiative), are we saying that it’s not okay to be critical of the society?

"I think if the prime minister really did know how people, especially women, get harassed on social media platforms for being critical of anything, or even being misquoted, he would put a stop to it. This is ridiculous,” adds the Masaan actor.

Looking for a boyfriend’ read another rumour when Richa was asked to make a statement, but wasn’t willing to. She finaly made a statement that hit the headlines.
On asking her about the incident, the 26-year-old reminisces: “That is one of those headline situations! So, the interviewer asked me, ‘Are you looking for a boyfriend?’ I said, ‘No, not really.’

Then the reporter said: ‘But you’re young, why don’t you look for a boyfriend? Come on, say it!’ And I was like: ‘Okay, if you say so.’ And then came the headline ‘Richa Chadha is looking for a boyfriend’!”

The actor doesn’t let criticism get to her. Praise and criticism are both temporary, she’s aware of that. Chadha draws a cricket analogy here: “This is a strange country. And I understood that when Sachin Tendulkar, who people call ‘God’, got booed at Wankhede for not scoring a run.

"Then I realised it. I was like, ‘F**k it, I’m not going to please anybody’. I just do my job, and don’t read reviews, good or bad. Now, there’s gushing, overwhelming praise for Masaan. I sometimes read what people say about other people, but not what they say about me. I really think that either the praise will get to my head, or I'll just be disappointed when they are not good.”

By Sree Teja