Actress Nyrraa Banerji, known for her work in television and films, recently opened up about her early experiences in the entertainment industry. In a candid conversation with The Free Press Journal, she recalled facing inappropriate comments and unsettling situations when she had just started her career as a teenager. From being told to pose 'sexily' like another actress to receiving unsolicited 'compromise' offers, Nyrraa shared the uncomfortable realities many newcomers face while chasing their dreams.
Nyrraa said, “I remember it was my first ever photo shoot and I was very young, so I used to pose cutely. And they told me, ‘Have you seen Riya Sen? Look at her eyes, look at the way she poses. You have to pose like her.’ I was literally 16 years old and they used to tell me, ‘Okay, pose like her, give a little sexy pose and all that.’ So my mom used to wonder, what is he doing? She used to be there all the time. And the photographer would say, ‘Madam, she is coming into the film industry, so she has to do it. If she poses like this and looks hot, she will get films soon'.”
Nyrraa further recalled how she and her mother would often feel uneasy about visiting certain offices during her early years in the industry. “Back in the day, they also used to call us to these very shady offices in Versova, Aram Nagar. My mom and I used to go. My mom was very supportive but I know she never liked going to such offices. We always wondered why those offices were so shady."
Later, as she began working more professionally, Nyrraa also started receiving unsettling phone calls and inappropriate proposals masked as 'commitments'.
"I used to get calls for this weird thing called 'commitment' which was some kind of compromise with the director. I was like, what is commitment? Nobody would tell me this in front of my mom but when the crew member would come to give me the script, they would hint at something like this. So this happened and I used to get very angry. Once I got a random phone call and I blasted saying, ‘Send your mother, send your sister or you go yourself.’ So I used to be very, very raw, and I was quite a tomboy in those days. So I used to abuse them, I used to shout at them, I used to curse them also.”
Nyrraa concluded saying, "I have faced very little, because every time I also used to say that I’m a lawyer. So no one says anything on my face. These are the people with whom I’m not doing a project. Somebody has kind of managed to get my number, and they are trying to call. It is those people. So I had to give them right, left, and center.”
