Ullozhukku star Parvathy Thiruvothu on Hema Committee Report: 'I am not okay with people saying the Malayalam industry is so...'

A few days back, the Hema Committee Report sent shockwaves across the country as it made some shocking revelations about the women facing sexual harassment in the Malayalam industry.

Actress Parvathy Thiruvothu, who has been vocal about her thoughts and often speaks about gender equality in cinema, expressed her mixed feelings about the release of the report. “I am not okay with people saying, ‘The Malayalam industry is so rotten inside.’ No, we are good inside, which is why we are fixing it. The places where you don’t hear anything about, that’s where we should be worried,” Parvathy said while talking to NDTV.

Describing the sense of achievement as “bitter-sweet,” she revealed, “The first deposition happened sometime in 2018, and the report was submitted in 2019. It took so many years for it to come out. In these years, we had to beg, grovel, and fight.”

“The Justice Hema Committee Report is a study of malpractices in the film industry. The report was generated to work toward better workplace culture and practices. But now, people are more focused on sensationalising aspects of it. It’s still a struggle to bring the focus back to what matters,” she added.

Sharing the emotional toll of the process, she admitted of losing the hope. “We turned up 6-7 hours a day, multiple days a week, believing it would benefit us and the women who come after us. But when we were told the report might never come out, it felt like the biggest betrayal. I lost all hope,” said the actress.

“This is the first time this is being done in any film industry. What worries me is the lack of Internal Complaints Committees on film shoots. Isn’t that the law already? This cleanup process should inspire other industries to follow suit,” the actress concluded.