Priyanka Chopra Jonas on Bollywood: ‘I’d earn 10% of my male co-actor’s salary’

BBC Newsd:

Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas tells BBC 100 Women that she received equal pay to her male co-actor for the first time in her 22-year career for her role in a forthcoming US spy series, Citadel.

She is a hugely successful star in India and has acted in more than 60 Bollywood movies. About a decade ago she made a foray into Hollywood and is now one of the few Indian actors to make a mark for themselves in the US entertainment industry.

“I’ve never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor”, said Ms Chopra Jonas.

“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,” she added.

“My generation of female actors have definitely asked [for equal pay]. We’ve asked, but we’ve not got it.”

Speaking after having been named on the BBC 100 Women list for 2022, Ms Chopra Jonas recounted how as a young actor in the Indian film industry she accepted deep rooted patriarchy as “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.