Neena Gupta recalls washing mouth with antiseptic after first on-screen kiss: 'He was a handsome guy, but...'

Neena Gupta recalled the harrowing experience of filming the first kissing scene ever on Indian television, which was later cut after outrage from the general public. The actor shared that she rinsed her mouth with an antiseptic after the scene.

Hyderabad: Actor Neena Gupta recalled the time when she did her first on-screen kiss which made her feel tense before and after filming the scene. Neena, who is set to feature in the forthcoming anthology film Lust Stories 2, revealed in an interview that the experience left her feeling so scared that she washed her mouth with an antiseptic after the scene. This took place in the early 1990s while she was working on the show Dillagi.

Neena said that it was unheard of in those days to display physical affection on screen, thus the channel's attempt to promote the episode by stating it had the first on-camera kiss in the history of Indian television backfired on them. In the interview, she said, "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 kissing scene, she said, "Many years ago, I worked on a series with Dilip Dhawan. The lip-to-lip kissing scene was the first on Indian television. I couldn't sleep all night after that. It was not like he was my friend, we were acquaintances. He was a handsome guy, but looks aren't everything. Because I was not ready physically and mentally. I was so tense, but I convinced myself to go through with it."

Neena reminded herself that she is an actor and that she must go past this. She said, "It is similar to how some people cannot do comedy or cry on television. I repeated it over and over, and I did it. After it was over, I immediately washed my mouth with Dettol. I had such a hard time kissing someone I didn't know."

Neena shared that the television network used the footage to promote the episode because they thought of hitting gold, however, it backfired on them. She said that there weren't many TV channels back then, and families would often watch TV together, but many viewers were horrified by the kissing scene and makers had to remove it.

Lust Stories 2 is the sequel to Netflix's 2018 anthology film but with a different group of filmmakers behind it. This time, Sujoy Ghosh, Amit Ravindernath Sharma, R Balki, and Konkona Sen Sharma directed it.