Netflix may delete an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” because of a “derogatory” remark made to Bollywood star Madhuri Dikshit.
Last week, Indian political analyst Mithun Vijay Kumar said that he sent an official notification to the streaming service with a request to delete the first episode of the second season, in which Raj Koothrapalli (Kunal Nayyar) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) compare actors Aishwarya. Rai and Madhuri Dikshit.
During their conversation, Sheldon calls Aishwarya Rai “the poor man’s Madhuri Dikshit”. To which Raj replies, “Aishwarya Rai is a goddess. By comparison, Madhuri Dikshit is a leper prostitute.”
In a tweet posted on Wednesday (March 22), Kumar called the comments made to Dixit “insulting and derogatory.”
“As a fan of Madhuri Dikshit since childhood, I was deeply disturbed by this dialogue,” he wrote. “I found it very derogatory and offensive towards Indian culture and women.
“So I asked my lawyer to send an official notice to Netflix asking them to remove the episode from their platform. It is important to hold media companies accountable for the content they distribute, and I hope that @NetflixIndia will take this issue seriously.”
Recently, I came across an episode of the show Big Bang Theory on Netflix where Kunal Nayyar's character uses an offensive and derogatory term to refer to the legendary Bollywood actress @MadhuriDixit. As a fan of Madhuri Dixit since childhood, I was deeply disturbed by the… pic.twitter.com/pvRCKd5Ne4
— Mithun Vijay Kumar (@MVJonline) March 22, 2023
Kumar added that refusing to remove the episode “will lead to legal action against Netflix” for promoting sexism and discrimination against women.
“As a responsible and leading streaming service provider, it is your responsibility to ensure that your content is free from any such remarks or actions,” reads an official notice from Kumar’s lawyer. “My client demands that you immediately remove the specified episode from your platform and make sure that there is no such undesirable content in any of your shows or movies.
The last episode of “The Big Bang Theory” aired in May 2019. The following year, the sitcom’s producer revealed that it planned to continue for two more years before Parsons left the show.
