Janhvi Kapoor revealed she struggled with depression after Dhadak, feeling rejected despite the film’s commercial success. She also opened up about disturbing experiences with morphed images online and the emotional toll they continue to take
Janhvi Kapoor
Janhvi Kapoor made her Bollywood debut in 2018 with the film Dhadak. It was a tough year for the actress because months before the release of her film, she lost her mother Sridevi. The actress now revealed that she slipped into depression after the release of her film, feeling that people hated her.
Janhvi Kapoor recalls slipping into depression
Janhvi Kapoor revisited her early days in Bollywood and her debut movie during a conversation with Raj Shamani. She made her acting debut in Dharma Productions’ Dhadak, opposite Ishaan Khatter. The film was a Hindi remake of the Marathi movie Sairat.
Recalling her first film, Janhvi said, "You know, every time anyone talks to me about my first film, Dhadak, they are like, ‘she was so good in it’ or that ‘we loved Dhadak’ and ‘you earned a lot of money’... But my memory of Dhadak was very different. I was depressed after Dhadak. I thought ho gaya and that pack-up ho gaya (I am done). People hate me.”
“I got all of my validation in my life from my mom. She went away. So I was like, okay, I'm going to shift that to the audience. And I was expecting some across-the-board acceptance, which I didn't know does not exist. I was only concentrating on the negative.
I didn't concentrate or even acknowledge the fact that it was a very… I think it was the most commercially successful film with newcomers up until Saiyaara. It didn't even click to me that it was a hit. I just knew that I sucked and people hated me… Because I only looked at the negative, and that became my reality.”
Janhvi Kapoor on finding her photo on porn sites
Janhvi Kapoor recalled seeing her first such image at the age of 15 during a conversation with Raj Shamani. She said, “I don’t know if it was a deepfake, but it was something like that. I saw a picture of me on a porn site.”
The Mili actress shared that she was in her IT class when she came across the images. “We had IT class in school, and boys used to go on those sites for fun. My pictures were on there. And this was in school, so that was a weird experience,” she said.
Further speaking about how she reacted, Janhvi said, “At some point, I was like, this is the cost you have to pay. There is no morality in a lot of these things on social media.” However, over time, she found it harder to rationalise, and such images now affect her deeply.
“I am not at peace with it. There are visuals of me out there, even shared by official news pages, which are completely AI-generated. I have never worn those clothes or been photographed like that,” she added.
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