‘Male superstars have been working for 8 hours a day for years’: Deepika Padukone on work hours row

Male superstars have been working for 8-hour workday shifts but never made headlines, said Deepika Padukone in her latest interview. This comes amid a row that the actress asked for limited and scheduled workhours, which reportedly did not go down well with at least two of her Sandeep Reddy Vanga (Spirit) and Nag Ashwin (Kalki 2). 

Speaking in an interview to CNBC-TV18 on the eve of World Mental Health Day, Padukone batted for the need to structure workplace systems. She says the film industry has never operated like one, and has always followed the “chalta hai” system. “If a system has been working well for this long, then why shake the apple cart? And I have never really been that person. I am always looking at how can we better something,” she said in the interview.

Padukone also underscored the gender bias in the conversation around work hours. “It is no secret that a lot of male superstars in the Indian film industry have been working 8-hour days for years, and it has never made headlines,” she said, acknowledging that there are new mothers too who have started working eight hours. 

It is not only about work hours, she emphasised, but the disorganisation in the industry as a whole. She said while the Indian film industry has been labeled an “industry”, they do not work like one. Padukone says the film industry works like a disorganised sector. 

The actress said she has always been vocal about issues in the work culture of the industry, and hopes to slowly but surely bring about necessary changes, because the Indian film industry is “brutal”. 

Responding to criticism she faced for speaking out, Padukone said that she has learnt to fight her battles silently. “I am someone who has always fought my battles silently and for some strange reason, sometimes they become public, which is not the way I know, and not the way I have been brought up.  But yes, to fight my battles and to do it silently and in a dignified way is the way I know,” she said. 

Padukone advocates for mental health awareness through her Live Love Laugh Foundation.