Throwback Thursday: 'The Big Bang Theory' Faced A Legal Notice Over A Dialogue On Madhuri Dixit

With 12 successful seasons, the popular television sitcom series ‘The Big Bang Theory’ has grown to become an important part of pop culture. However, the show found itself in a soup when someone filed a complaint with Netflix. The complainant asked the streaming giant to remove one scene that featured Kunal Nayyar’s Raj and Jim Parsons’ Sheldon Cooper.

Back in 2008, the first episode of the second season of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ featured a conversation between Raj Koothrapalli and Sheldon Cooper. In the ‘The Bad Fish Paradigm’ episode, Raj and Sheldon are seen talking about Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Sheldon calls Aishwarya “a poor man’s Madhuri Dixit”. To which Raj Koothrapalli responds by saying, “Aishwarya Rai is a goddess, by comparison, Madhuri Dixit is a leprous prostitute”.

A political analyst wrote to Netflix as he was not impressed by the scene. He sent a legal notice to Netflix and asked them to remove the scene. He had filed a complaint in March 2023 and had shared a copy of the legal notice on his X (formerly, Twitter) account. He tweeted, “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 dialogue. I found it highly derogatory and offensive towards Indian culture and women.”

Netflix responded to the complaint and forwarded it to Warner Brothers who are in charge of the content that comes on ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ The streaming giant did that because they do not have the power to change scenes, only Warner Brothers can sit with the makers of the show and take a call.