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Munna Michael (2017) may not have given Nidhhi Agerwal a blockbuster debut in Bollywood, but she has since built a strong career in Tamil and Telugu cinema. The actor, who is now looking forward to the release of Hari Hara Veera Mallu, is pleased at how a shift to Telugu cinema has benefited her immensely. “It has been an amazing learning because I’m getting to play roles that I could only dream of, in Telugu films.
” With many of Bollywood’s leading ladies—from Priyanka Chopra to Deepika Padukone and Kiara Advani—being south-bound recently, there has been a discourse about how they take home fatter pay cheques in regional cinema compared to Bollywood. Mention this to Agerwal, and she asserts that her decision was not influenced by monetary gains. “I chose to be a part of the Telugu film industry before Baahubali [2015] released.
I’m not doing it as a calculated move,” she explains, before adding, “It’s not like you’ll get paid more in Telugu and less in Hindi. You get the pay depending on the production.” A still from Hari Hara Veera MalluGender pay gap has been an ongoing discourse in Bollywood, with many female actors questioning the practice.
But Agerwal believes pay disparity has another aspect of gender at play. “I don’t know if it’s about gender. The root cause is that male actors have 50-year careers.
They work till they are 50-55, even 70! So, they have a huge following. But women are not given that much time to establish themselves. They are labelled a certain way after they turn 30-32.
If a heroine and a hero are given the same opportunity, they’d get the same opening and nobody would mind paying them the same amount.” 2017The year Agerwal debuted in Bollywood with Munna Michael.
