In an interview last month, Dixit discussed the pervasive nature of stardom and the changes Bollywood has undergone during her career
But for director and screenwriter Sri Rao, Dixit was more than a Bollywood megastar. Rao grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania with parents who once called India home, and Bollywood became a link between the cultures that defined him. Years later, Dixit’s outsize celebrity inspired Rao to create “The Fame Game,” Dixit’s first regular role in a major streaming series.
“It’s hard for me to adequately describe her to folks who aren’t familiar with who she is, because we don’t have a comparable analogy in America,” Rao said about Dixit in a recent phone interview. “I try to say she’s like Julia Roberts and Madonna and Meryl Streep all rolled into one, because her level of stardom is so far beyond anything that we know of in the West.”
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