New Delhi: Priyanka Chopra is one of the four Indians to make it to the list of BBC’s ‘100 Women’ this year. The actor spoke at length to BBC about the pay disparity and body-shaming in Bollywood. She also spoke about how men earned special privileges on film sets in Bollywood.
"I've never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor. It [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. I've never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor", Priyanka told BBC.
"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 added.
She also recalled being body shamed at the start of her career because of her complexion.
"I was called 'black cat', 'dusky'. I mean, what does 'dusky' even mean in a country where we are literally all brown? 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," she said.
When asked about her work experience and pay parity in Hollywood she said, “Well, the first time it's happened to me, it has happened in Hollywood. So I don't know going forward. Because this was my first show with a male actor as a co-lead."
The actress was referring to her upcoming role in the series Citadel where she is working opposite Richard Madden.
Produced by Russo Brothers, 'Citadel' will release on Prime Video. Priyanka will also be seen in international project Love Again with Sam Heughan and in Bollywood her next project is alongside Alia Bhatt and Katrina Kaif in Farhan Akhtar's 'Jee Le Zaraa'.