Bollywood is facing criticism from one its international icons who says there is huge pay disparity and body shaming in the industry.
International icon Priyanka Chopra Jones shared recently to BBC 100 Women that the first time she received equal salary to her male co-star is for her role in upcoming Hollywood film Citadel.
In her 22-year career and starring in over 60 movies in Bollywood, she was always underpaid compared to her male co-stars.
“I’ve never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor,” said the Quantico actress.
The Baywatch star continued, “The pay gap is large, substantially large. And so many women still deal with that. I’m sure I will too if I worked with a male co-actor now in Bollywood.”
“My generation of female actors have definitely asked for equal pay. We’ve asked, but we’ve not got it,” stated the 40-year-old, who also spoke of body shaming.
Nick Jonas’ wife also talked about the time when patriarchy was accepted as “normal” in the Indian film industry.
One of the prime examples was she thought “it was absolutely OK to sit for hours and hours on set, while my male co-actor just took his own time, and decided whenever he wanted to show up on set is when we would shoot”.
Body shaming and fair skin
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The actress also said she experienced body shaming mainly because of Bollywood’s obsession with fair skin.
“I was called black cat, dusky. I mean, what does dusky even mean in a country where we are literally all brown?” remarked the Bajirao Mastani actress.
The actress noted, “I thought I was not pretty enough, I believed that I would have to work a lot harder, even though I thought I was probably a little bit more talented than my fellow actors who were lighter skinned. But I thought that was right because it was so normalised.”
However, “it is up to our generation to be able to cut those ties and change it so that the next generation doesn’t inherit the equity placed on light skin,” remarked the Dil Dhadakne Do star.
She shared that being a superstar in Bollywood, it is tough for her to carve a niche for herself in Hollywood especially due to her “ethnicity”.
The Sky Is Pink actress mentioned, “I think maybe I’ve built a certain amount of credibility, and so I’m doing interesting work. We’ll see if that’s accepted or not.”
“It’s really hard to be South Asian and Indian in Hollywood. There’s still a long way to go,” she added.
Priyanka has experience as an actress, producer, author and entrepreneur. She has a large fan following and is one of the only four Indians to make it to the list of BBC’s ‘100 Women’ this year. The beauty won Miss India in 2000 and following that she debuted in Bollywood.
She starred in The Hero opposite Sunny Deol in 2002. Priyanka has received a National Award for Fashion. She has also given award-winning performances in films like Barfi, 7 Khoon Maaf, Mary Kom, and Bajirao Mastani, among others.
Priyanka will be next seen in Citadel. The upcoming sci-fi drama series is directed by Patrick Morgan and stars Richard Madden. In Bollywood, she will be starring with Alia Bhatt and Katrina Kaif in Farhan Akhtar’s Jee Le Zaraa.