She first stepped into the spotlight as a skinny girl with a bright smile, but the cameras had other plans. In the making of Pataakha, the director asked her to add weight, and she did – 15 kilos of extra flesh to fit the character’s look.
Then came Shiddat and Angrezi Medium, two projects that demanded a different body type. The relentless shooting schedule turned her once‑plump frame into something that felt like it could crack under the slightest pressure. She joked that the directors kept calling her "too fat" and then “how will a heroine look like that?”
The result? She started losing weight, one day to the next, until she was basically a skeleton with a faint pulse. She had to pause the grind and focus on her own health. “I had to stop chasing others’ expectations,” she told Hindustan Times, admitting that the pressure had taken a toll on her body and mood.
What’s striking is how she reframed the conversation. Instead of chasing a specific size, she decided to chase health and self‑acceptance. She now says that if you’re content with being healthy, external opinions lose their bite. Yet she also warns that online criticism still lingers, and the cultural obsession with the “perfect woman” is a legacy of media portrayals from a young age.
In the background, she’s still a buzz in the industry, having played Sailee Vaidya in Shakun Batra’s Lust Stories 3 opposite Ali Fazal. Her story is a reminder that the line between an actor’s craft and their body can blur dangerously fast.
For fans and filmmakers alike, Radhikka’s journey is both cautionary and hopeful: it shows the need for healthier norms in cinema and the possibility of breaking free from the shackles of body‑shaming.