Nepotism debate won’t stop, accepts Bollywood star Ananya Panday
Is your success because of who you are, or who you know?
Nepotism – giving work opportunities and advantages to your friends and family – has been the subject of debate in showbiz around the world for a number of years.
Some feel “nepo babies” – those who’ve been given a boost because of their parents – don’t deserve their success, while Gwyneth Paltrow called that term “ugly”.
But it’s not just a Hollywood thing.
Bollywood actress Ananya Panday has been criticised and heavily trolled over nepotism because her father Suyash “Chunky” Panday was a successful actor in the late 1980s.
While accepting her privilege, Ananya has often disputed how much of an impact his success had on her career.
But now the 25-year-old says she wants her work to do the talking.
“I was always the first person to be like: I know I come from a [film] family, my father’s an actor and obviously that’s given me more access [to opportunities].
“I’ve never fought it. But I realised that there is so much conversation about it and people are not going to stop asking about nepotism,” she tells BBC Asian Network’s Haroon Rashid.
“You think it’s over but people will keep talking about it. I realised it’s better to just not say anything any more and let your work speak.”
In her new show Call Me Bae, Ananya plays a character which some feel has real-life similarities to her.
Bae, aka Bella Chowdhary, comes from a privileged and elite background but is soon kicked out of her life of luxury and forced to try to make it on her own.
“It’s a riches to rags and almost underdog story,” Ananya says.
But she says real-life experiences did not impact her decision to take the role, instead she “just went with the story and script”.
“I think the lovely thing about this is that it’s very self-aware.
“It speaks about the privilege, wealth and the bubble that the character is living in, which breaks in the first episode.
“A lot of people say I’m very similar to Bae. I think once people watch it, they’ll see more differences than similarities,” she says.
‘Where our dreams come true, their struggle begins’
The humour in the show is quite “tongue-in-cheek with a lot of pop culture references”, she says, and that includes a real-life interaction Ananya had on the topic of privilege and nepotism.
During a roundtable discussion with other actors in 2020, Ananya was saying she’d make no apologies for being her famous father’s daughter and that she was “so proud of him”.
After a long, impassioned speech from Ananya, Siddhant Chaturvedi, who does not come from a famous family, chipped in to support her.
“Everybody has their own struggle,” he said, before switching to Hindi and uttering a line that earned nods and noises of approval from his fellow actors.
“The difference is, where our dreams come true, their struggle begins (jahan humare sapne pure hote hai wahan inka struggle shuru hota hai).”
It was a line that went viral, and was included in the script for Call Me Bae.
Ananya says it’s not the first time someone tried to put this real-world line into scripted fiction.
“But in this situation it worked well because it went with the character of Bae.
“When you watch it in the scene, it’s not completely jarring that the conversation happens.”
As a result, she says she “felt safe in the environment”.
“It wasn’t the only cultural reference. I feel we don’t have that enough in our films and shows.”
