Daily Times

‘Thugs of Hindostan’ actor Fatima Sana Shaikh has said that sexual assault has been normalised to such an extent that women accept abuse as normal. Asked if she had ever faced sexual harassment, Fatima told Mumbai Mirror in an interview, “I don’t want to expose that side of my life… I’m dealing with it, speaking to people I’m close to. Just like I won’t judge those who want to share their horror stories, I expect not to be judged for not sharing mine.”

Applauding the MeToo movement for providing a platform for victims of sexual harassment, she further said, “Now sexual predators are scared of being shamed in public and shunned by the industry. For so many years we had normalised assault to such an extent that women had come to accept abuse as something that was normal.”

Fatima also admitted that the box office failure of ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ made her so disheartened that she didn’t come out of the room for days and wanted to run away some place else. “We were all disturbed, we had worked on the film for a-year-and-a-half,” she sighs. However, she does not regret doing the film: “Why would I not do a film like Thugs? I still don’t consider it a setback to my career.”

Directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya, the film starred Aamir Khan, Katrina Kaif and Amitabh Bachchan in lead roles. It was loosely based on Philip Meadows Taylor’s 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug. Made at a mammoth budget, the film suffered heavily in its first week itself with its first Monday collections standing at a meagre Rs 5.25 crore. According to Boxofficeindia.com, the total collections of the film stood at Rs 139.50 crore after 11 days.

Published in Daily Times, March 14^th 2019.