Actress-journalist Divya Unny, on Tuesday, opened up on Twitter about how she was sexually harassed by late filmmaker Rajesh Pillai three years ago. Unny, who played a supporting role in Pillai’s debut Bollywood film, a remake of his 2011 Malayalam film Traffic, said that the filmmaker told her that she won’t get any roles down south unless she agreed to have sex with him. Pillai died due to liver failure in February 2016.
3yrs back National Award winning Malayalam filmmaker Rajesh Pillai had said to me that I won’t get any roles down south unless I sleep with him. He was a misogynist and a disgrace to the cinema he claimed to love. He’s no more now. #METOO #TIMESUPhttps://t.co/LYJWztbWZc
— DU (@divyaunny) October 10, 2018
Unny had written a piece for Open Magazine, dated November 24, 2017, in which she had recounted the harassment. In the article, she said that a ‘popular film director in Thiruvananthapuram’ sent her a casual text saying he would like to cast her in his next Malayalam project. She met him in his room in Thiruvananthapuram where, instead of talking about the film, he told her that she would have to offer him sexual favours for the role. Unny said that the filmmaker even suggested that the photographs she had sent him were provocative. On Tuesday, Unny tweeted that the person mentioned in the article was Pillai.
The person mention in the article and the person in my tweet are one and the same. I couldn’t reveal his name when i wrote this piece. Rajesh Pillai is the man who objectified me, and expected favours from me in return for a role. https://t.co/QJC9oOGGnM
— DU (@divyaunny) October 10, 2018
The ongoing #MeToo wave in the country has led to several women working in media, cinema and other walks of life opening up about workplace harassment. Yesterday, Mumbai-based casting director Tess Joseph had spoken out about being harassed by actor-politician Mukesh on the sets of the reality show Koteeswaran in Chennai.
