Sridevi was known for being one of the best actors of her generation. Like many other stars during that time, she was being subjected to severe criticism about her physical appearance. In a recent interview, director Pankaj Parashar, who worked with her in Chaalbaaz, recalled when director Ram Gopal Varma kept hounding her to lose weight. This resulted in Sridevi fainting, being unconscious for 20 minutes and losing a tooth.
In a chat with Friday Talkies, Pankaj was asked about the excessive delay in the release of his incomplete film Meri Biwi Ka Jawab Nahin, in which Sridevi starred with Akshay Kumar. Pankaj said that he would blame Ram Gopal Varma for this, as he kept pushing Sridevi to lose weight and she went on a crash diet to do so. They worked together in 1991’s Telugu film Kshana Kshanam.
Talking about the film, he said, “It was going well, but my friend, Ram Gopal Varma, I blame him for that because he kept telling Sridevi to lose weight. She went on a crash diet and when she did that, she stopped taking salt, her blood pressure dropped and she fainted. She fainted, hit the table and was unconscious for 20 minutes. She lost a tooth. So we lost an entire schedule.”
Pankaj said that because Sridevi hit her face, she had to take a break and the film’s schedule was abandoned midway. “The movie went off rail, the financer went away, the producer died, all those things happened, so I left the film.”
A few years ago, Akshay Kumar, in an appearance on Koffee with Karan, said that they never shot the ending of the film. An incomplete version was released theatrically in 2004. He recalled that the characters in the film announced that they would take revenge but since they never shot that part, the film just ended with some text on screen saying that they eventually took their revenge.
In an earlier chat with The New Indian, Sridevi’s husband, producer Boney Kapoor, shared that she was on a diet when she passed away in 2018. “She often used to starve; she wanted to look good. She wanted to make sure she’s in good shape, so that on-screen, she looks good. From the time she was married to me, she had blackouts on a couple of occasions, and the doctor kept on saying she had a low BP issue.” In the same chat, he also recalled that time when she lost her tooth because of fainting. “Nagarjuna had come home to offer his condolences, and he told me that during one of her movies, she was again on a crash diet, and that’s how she fell in the bathroom and broke her teeth,” he said.
