Regena Cassandra questions Janhvi Kapoor's Peddi remarks: 'You are creating a North-South divide...'

Regena Cassandra has entered the debate over Janhvi Kapoor’s role in Peddi. She questioned why actresses who are uncomfortable with how they are portrayed don’t simply leave the project. She also warned that Janhvi’s comments about the Telugu film risk widening the North-South divide.

In an interview with India Today, Regena was responding to Janhvi’s admission on Koffee With Karan that her Peddi role amounted to objectification and that she should have pushed back harder during filming.

She said, “At the end of the day, I am glad they are talking about it. But the problem is that when a North Indian actor talks about South cinema like that, I have a big problem with it. You cannot do that."

She added, "You are creating a North-South divide without even realising it, and that is absolutely wrong. There are different ways of handling these issues and different ways of talking about them. There is already a North-South divide, and I say this as a South Indian actor who works in the Hindi film industry,” she said.

During the same interview, Regena said Dharma Productions had left her out of the promotional campaign for Kesari Chapter 2, even though she played Akshay Kumar’s wife in the film. "Janhvi Kapoor has spoken about being objectified and feeling that she did not have a voice or a chance to say no. But the same Karan Johar, through Dharma Productions, made a film with me called Kesari Chapter 2 and decided not to promote me. Now, what am I supposed to call that? Is that objectification because I am a South Indian? To this day, I don’t know why my name was not included,” she said.

She added, "They released a song from the film, and I am the only one in it, from beginning to end. But there was no tag. Nobody even came and told me anything. It is very strange. I don’t like talking about these things or making a big deal out of them, but since we are discussing this and bringing up names, I feel I should speak about my experience too."

Regena said an actor who is unhappy with a scene or with how a character is written can refuse to continue with the project. She said she was speaking as an outsider who did not want to take sides, though she would always support women.

Referring to actresses who have been cast opposite much older male stars, including in Nandamuri Balakrishna’s films, Regena said quitting publicly would be better than criticising a project afterwards. She acknowledged that some actors may feel pressured, but argued they are not helpless.

Janhvi had said she did not always know how her Peddi scenes would be shot because she was not given bound scripts with detailed scene descriptions. Regena said that in Telugu and Tamil films, actors sometimes receive a scene only on the morning it is filmed. Even so, she said, they usually know the story, their character and the overall direction of the film before they sign on, and some productions do provide complete hardbound scripts.

She also said Mumbai sets tend to be more structured. Call sheets there typically list the shooting schedule, scene numbers, cast, crew contacts and even sunrise and sunset timings, a level of organisation she said is not always found in the South.

Regena admitted she had not watched Janhvi’s full Koffee With Karan episode and had mostly seen memes about it. Her main objection, she said, was a North Indian actor criticising South cinema in this way. As a South Indian actor who also works in Hindi films, she believes the divide already exists, and comments like these deepen it, even unintentionally. She urged actresses to keep speaking up without framing the issue along regional lines.

Janhvi appeared on Koffee With Karan with Varun Dhawan and spoke about the backlash over her role in Peddi. She said she had hesitated to address it because many people had worked hard on the film, but felt she had to take ownership of her part in it. She said she could have been more vigilant and made a bigger scene. She also acknowledged that the portrayal amounted to extreme objectification and carried a harmful narrative, which she called a source of lasting shame.