Actor Taapsee Pannu weighed in on the wage gap between male and female actors in Bollywood. She said that female actors who ask for more money are seen as “difficult” whereas the same is a measurement of success for male actors. In a new interview, Taapsee talks about women-centric films being made on a lower budget.
She said, “If a female actor asks more, she is termed difficult and problematic and if a man asks more it’s a mark of his success. Difference is, the men who started with me earn 3-5 times more than what I do. And the gap keeps increasing as we go in higher star category.” She said the audience does not celebrate female actors as much as male actors, resulting in lower box office collections for women-centric films.
“Even now we struggle with budgets. Everyone hears that since it’s a female-driven film budgets will have to be slashed and that’s because our returns are always unfair in comparison to our male counterparts. And audience is a big reason behind that,” she said.
On the work front, Taapsee was last seen in Vinil Mathew's 'Haseen Dillruba' alongside Vikrant Massey and Harshvardhan Rane. She plays a woman who becomes the prime suspect after her husband dies in a cylinder explosion. Her pipeline includes Deepak Sundarajan’s Tamil film with Vijay Sethupathi, 'Shabaash Mithu', 'Looop Lapeta', 'Rashmi Rocket' and 'Dobaaraa'.
