Janhvi Kapoor recalls 'cruel' labels directed at Sridevi: 'People called her a homewrecker'

In 2018, just a few months before Janhvi Kapoor's debut film Dhadak released, Sridevi died. In a recent appearance on Raj Shamani’s YouTube channel, Janhvi shared her grief, adding that she continues to process the resulting trauma.

She said, "I try to escape my mind, my inner turmoil. The feelings that I haven’t dealt with, the trauma that I haven’t dealt with. The biggest trauma was losing my mom, especially the way I did, in front of the whole world and dealing with that journey.”

Before the tragedy, Janhvi described herself as a 'very dependent' daughter who relied on her mother for everything from fashion choices to moral compassing. That safety net vanished overnight.

“I was a very dependent daughter. I didn’t make my own decisions. I would depend on her for that. What should I wear? What should I think? What is wrong and right? Everything. So suddenly to make your own decisions with the world ripping you apart, making accusations on family dynamics…”

She added, “I made some bad decisions and let some people into my life that had no business being anywhere near me and taking advantage of me the way that they did. I was not putting myself in a safe space. I was compromising my mental and physical safety constantly.”

Janhvi asserted that she can never quite recover from the pain of losing her mother, adding that she 'lost' her father Boney Kapoor too, the day she died. "I miss who she made me, my sister and my father. I didn’t lose one parent, I lost my father also that day, the version of him that existed when she was around.”

Janhvi also remembered watching an old interview of Sridevi, where the actress had shared her need to be taken seriously during her initial years in the Hindi film industry. Janhvi said, “I have seen that journey. People were not very kind when she was around. They called her a homewrecker and all the cruel things. It played on her mind and made her feel a certain way, but history is kind to people who have passed.”