Mumbai: Actor Saif Ali Khan, during his recent appearance on sister Soha Ali Khan’s podcast, spoke about gender pay parity in Bollywood, saying that actors with a similar standing should ideally be paid the same.
He also highlighted that salaries in the film industry are largely determined by box-office performance.
“If the actors are of equal stature, they should be paid the same amount. But I also feel the economics work in a certain way. If you are putting people in seats in the theatre, you get paid accordingly. Everyone understands that relationship,” Saif said.
“It’s not like just because you are a certain gender you deserve to be paid more or less. It’s actually a very balanced economic system where people are clear that this person is a superstar because they are filling theatres. They know their worth, charge that price and get paid,” he added.
Saif’s brother-in-law and Soha’s husband Kunal Kemmu pointed out the industry’s long-standing financial model tied to distribution and territory sales.
“This is the mathematical part, not whether a film will work or not — that’s a different thing. Earlier, distributors knew that if I have this actor, I can sell a territory for a certain amount of money and that becomes part of the recovery,” said Kemmu, who is also an actor.
