Actress Neena Gupta recalls how nervous she was both before and after the scene of her first on-screen kiss, which they filmed. The forthcoming installment of the Netflix anthology film series Lust Stories will include Neena in a starring role. Neena said in an interview that she was so traumatised by the event that when it was over, she rinsed her mouth with an antibiotic to get the taste out of her mouth. This took place in the early 1990s, when she was working on the television programme Dillagi.
Neena said that displaying physical closeness on screen was unheard of during those times, and the move on the part of the channel to sell the episode by stating that it contained the first-ever on-camera kiss in the history of Indian television backfired on them. Neena claimed that the attempt to promote the episode by saying that it included the first-ever on-camera kiss in the history of Indian television backfired. She told Inside Bollywood, “As an actor you have to do all kinds of scenes, sometimes you have to step in mud, sometimes you have to stand in the sun for several hours.”
Recalling the kiss incident, she continued in Hindi, “Many years ago, I did a serial with Dilip Dhawan. It had the first-ever lip-to-lip kissing scene on Indian TV. I couldn’t sleep all night. It wasn’t like he was a friend, we were acquaintances. He was good-looking, but that doesn’t really matter in these situations, because physically and mentally, I wasn’t ready. I was so tense, but I convinced myself to go through with it.”
Neena brought up the fact that she is an actress and reminded herself that she would need to overcome this obstacle. “It’s like some people can’t do comedy, some people can’t cry on camera. I drilled it into my head, and I did it. As soon as it ended, I rinsed my mouth with Dettol. It was so difficult for me to kiss somebody who I don’t know.”
The station believed that it had made a brilliant discovery, and it used the tape to advertise the programme. Neena disclosed that it ended up being counterproductive for them. She said that at that time, there weren’t too many television channels, which meant that families often ended up watching television together. As a result, many people were shocked by the kissing scene. So, Neena said, “They had to remove it.” She concluded, “I did a love scene in Utsav, it was very difficult.”
A new group of directors and producers worked on the production of Lust Stories 2, the sequel to the anthology film that was a smash blockbuster for Netflix in 2018. Sujoy Ghosh, Amit Ravindernath Sharma, R. Balki, and Konkona Sen Sharma were the directors of the four short films that were produced this time around.
