Pallavi Joshi, a veteran actress in the Indian film industry, recently shared a disturbing experience from her early career in an interview with Friday Talkies. The incident occurred during the filming of her debut movie, Naag Mere Saathi in 1973 when she was just four years old.
Joshi recounted a scene where she was supposed to cry while performing a puja. However, the young actress found the situation amusing and couldn't stop laughing. Despite several takes, she was unable to produce tears. Frustrated, the director, Shantilal Joshi, asked her father to slap her. Her father refused but pretended to be angry to try to coax her to cry, but she knew he was just pretending. Losing patience, Shantilal Joshi walked up to her and slapped her himself to try to get her to cry.
The unexpected slap left young Pallavi in shock. "The camera was rolling. I was in shock. I was only four. No one had ever slapped me before. My ego was hurt. 'Pure unit ke saamne mujhe kaise maar diya?' (How could he slap me in front of the whole unit?)," she recalled. The humiliation and surprise led to uncontrollable tears, which the director captured on film.
Following the shot, a distraught Pallavi declared she didn't want to continue filming. Her father, equally shocked by the director's actions, questioned his behavior. The director called for a pack-up, and Pallavi remained adamant about not returning to the set.
A few days later, her father grew anxious because the filmmaker hadn't called them back. However, Shantilal was simply waiting for Pallavi to calm down. Eventually, she resumed shooting.
Pallavi Joshi started her acting journey at the age of four. She appeared in films like Aadmi Sadak Ka, and Badla. She received acclaim for playing a blind child in Dada. In the 1990s, she was in art films like Rukmavati Ki Haveli, Trishagni, and Rihaee, and commercial films including Saudagar, Panaah, Mujrim, and Tehelka. She won her first National Award for her role in Woh Chokri.
Pallavi took a break from cinema after playing Kasturba Gandhi in The Making of the Mahatma and returned with Renuka Shahane's Rita in 2009. She was recently seen in Tanvi The Great, and will be seen in The Bengal Files, directed by her husband Vivek Agnihotri.
