Priyanka Chopra calls out body shaming and lack of pay parity in Bollywood

Actor Priyanka Chopra, who recently made it to the list of BBC’s 100 most influential women, spoke about the pay disparity and body-shaming that exists in the Hindi film industry. She also added how men earned special privileges on Bollywood sets.

Speaking to BBC, the actor said, ‘I've never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor. It's (the pay gap) 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.’

Priyanka also opened up on how she considered the deep rooted patriarchy in film sets as something very normal. ‘I 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,’ she said.

She also revealed that she was called ‘black cat’ and ‘dusky’. Actor added that she thought she was not pretty enough and had to work harder that those who were light skinned. PeeCee said that this is the first time she received equal pay as a male co-lead for her upcoming Hollywood spy series ‘Citadel’.

On the work front, Priyanka Chopra will next be seen in ‘Love Again’ with Sam Heughan, apart from ‘Citadel’. She also has ‘Jee Le Zaraa’ alongside Alia Bhatt and Katrina Kaif in the pipeline.

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