Bollywood echoes in Hollywood scandal

The Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood where the movie mogul has been accused of sexually harassing a large number of actresses has had some tangential connections to Bollywood too. Aishwarya Rai, for one, found her name coming up in the controversy though she herself did not comment on it. Instead it was a former manager of hers in Hollywood, Simone Sheffield, who said that Weinstein had actually wanted to get Aishwarya alone but had been rebuffed. Simone wrote in the comments section of a media article on Weinstein, ‘He asked me to leave the meeting numerous times and I politely declined. When we were leaving his office he cornered me and said “what do I have to do to get her alone?”…I never gave him the opportunity to even breathe on my client.’ The other person who commented on the Weinstein episode was Priyanka Chopra, who said that he was not an aberration and that there were people like him everywhere and that included India. She added that such harassment was not about sex but power.