Actor Mandira Bedi had already made a name for herself on television and in films when she landed the gig of hosting the cricket World Cup in 2003. In a recent interview, Mandira recalled the experience of having millions of eyes on her, and spoke about the sexism that she had to deal with on an everyday basis from the cricket experts who would just ignore her questions altogether. Mandira said that she cried every day for a week, but after that, she made a massive change.
In a chat with Humans of Bombay, Mandira recalled, “It was not easy, because they had never had a woman sitting on the panel. So, the legends sitting on the left and the right, they weren’t particularly excited about having a woman on the panel. I would ask a question, some of my questions were really silly, irrelevant, stupid, but my brief was, ‘You ask the questions that come to your mind. Whatever you have in your mind, it’s not off the table, go ahead and ask’. So, if I have those questions in my mind, then somebody at home has got similar questions in their mind. I am not supposed to represent the purist, I am supposed to represent the common person.”
Mandira said that when she would ask her questions, the cricket experts would just stare at her face, and look back at the camera and start speaking about whatever they wanted to “without even acknowledging what I had asked.” She recalled that at the end of every show, “I would put my head down and I would cry, and people sitting on my left and right would say, ‘I will just go and get some coffee. Would you like some coffee?’ and just leave. I was just miserable and nobody said anything to me for the first one week. I was stuttering and stumbling and I was nervous, and I was not getting any support from anywhere. I had a co-host. His questions were acknowledged.”
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Mandira said that after the first week, the channel called her in for an ‘intervention’. She was worried that she would get fired, but they instilled their faith in her. She was told to “bring some fun into that boring panel” and this changed her outlook. Mandira started being more assertive and insisting that her questions be answered on camera. “From that one week of hell” to now, things had changed and she started having fun on the show.
She recalled that towards the end, Tiger Pataudi once visited their studio and he said, “You are the Mandira Bedi everyone is talking about?” Mandira hosted the 2007 cricket World Cup as well. She also hosted the Champions Trophy in 2004 and 2006, and IPL Season 2.
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