The Hindi film industry’s on-set safety conversation has moved from contract language to enforcement after Radhika Apte’s recent account of an intimate scene leak. Lust Stories 3 actor Anirudh Surya has a blunt safeguard: keep phones out of the room.
What Surya actually said
Surya, who appears in Vikramaditya Motwane’s segment of the Netflix anthology, told Mid-Day that he has not shot an intimate scene himself and has largely worked in comedy. The ensemble around him includes Vijay Varma, Abhishek Banerjee and Konkona Sen Sharma. Still, he said, the idea of a private moment being recorded deliberately would be uncomfortable. “Anything private wouldn’t be comfortable,” he said.
His wider point is that Indian productions already carry formal protection. Intimacy coordinators are now common on films with intimate material, he noted, and crew members sign NDAs and contracts that should make unauthorised footage “100 per cent” unlikely. He added that he does not know how Apte’s clip surfaced, but his assumption is that someone from the crew or an outsider recorded it on a phone—not because it was allowed, but because a phone slipped through.
“The only thing one could do is to ensure there are no phones on the set,” Surya said, arguing that the rule matters most when intimate sequences are being filmed.
Why the leak still lands heavily
Apte’s recent account explains why this is not a minor set-etiquette debate. She told India Today that she could not leave her house for four days after a clip leaked, and that intrusion could arrive at her door: “Your doorbell can ring, and somebody can be outside your house because they felt offended.” The fallout, she said, is not only about public image but about safety at home.
That is the gap Surya’s phone-free suggestion is trying to close. A contract can punish a leak after the damage is done; an enforced no-phone rule is meant to stop the recording from existing in the first place.
What production teams can do
The practical lessons for Hindi film crews are simple, and easy to repeat until they become habit:
- Treat a mobile phone as a production risk during intimate scenes, not a personal convenience.
- Brief every artist and crew member on NDA penalties before the first take.
- Have an intimacy coordinator present from rehearsal through monitor review.
For a franchise like Lust Stories, built on desire and intimacy, the message is sharper: the series can only hold its subject matter if performers trust the set. The exchange arrives at a time when streaming gives a leaked clip a long afterlife, which makes prevention more urgent than apology. Surya’s comment does not solve leaks retroactively, but it names the simplest control—and the one most dependent on discipline.
Source: The Times of India
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