Priyanka Chopra said that she didn’t know that she ‘had that power’ to ask for pay parity, as it was not the norm to do so in the film industry.

Priyanka Chopra made a successful switch from Bollywood to Hollywood, and went on to star as a lead in the show Quantico, and in last year’s Citadel. However, the actor says she did not know she had the ‘power’ to ask for pay parity in the first place. In an interview with India Today during the promotional rounds for WOMB, the actor shared how she was ‘surprised’ when her agents made the call around pay parity. (Also read: Priyanka Chopra says she had pay parity with her male co-star only in Citadel: ‘First time I got equal pay in 22 years’)

What Priyanka said

During the interview, Priyanka recalled the conversation and added, “When my agents told me that we were going to ask for pay parity, even I was surprised. I was like, ‘What? No, that doesn’t happen in our industry.’ And they were like, ‘Let’s just ask the question.’ So, I didn’t even know that I had that power. I did not know I could aspire for more, because I was desensitised. I was told this is normal.”

More details

This is not the first time that Priyanka has shed light on the topic of pay parity. “I’ve never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor. It’s (the pay gap) 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 had said in an interview with BBC ‘100 Women’ in 2022. She also mentioned that it was in Citadel, co-starring Richard Madden, where she had pay parity with her male co-star for the first time.

Priyanka is currently shooting for Heads of State. It also features Idris Elba, John Cena, and Jack Quaid in key roles under the direction of Ilya Naishuller. She will also be seen in The Bluff, directed by Frank E Flowers.