Parineeti Chopra: Audience isn’t cancelling mothers from the big screen

A heroine’s career is over as soon as she embraces motherhood. For far too long, the Hindi film industry perpetuated this misguided notion. Parineeti Chopra is glad that the myth has been debunked over and over again by her peers. And now, by her too. The actor, who was pregnant with her son Neer while shooting her debut series, Shaque: Trust No One, praised producers Siddharth P Malhotra and Sapna Malhotra for supporting her.

All it needed was an honest conversation with the makers of the Netflix thriller, said Chopra. “I told them, ‘These are certain things I’ll now have to do, and certain things I’ll have to avoid. How can we make this work?’ Here is when producers like Siddharth and Sapna matter because their minds switched to management mode. They immediately spoke to our director [Rensil D’Silva] and started creatively finding solutions because I had to do a lot of action in this show. We’ve done all of it, but in a way that was safe for me,” the actor told mid-day.

‘Shaque: Trust No One’ marks Parineeti Chopra’s foray into web series

However, she is aware that not every filmmaker would be as supportive. “There are certain filmmakers who might make the mother feel guilty. It’s the craziest thing to do to her during this emotional time,” she reflected.

Chopra is tired of it all — the scrutiny that comes with actors turning mother and the speculation about their careers ending. Especially when the latter has been proved otherwise. “All of us — Alia [Bhatt], my cousin Priyanka [Chopra], Deepika [Padukone], Kareena [Kapoor Khan], and now Katrina [Kaif] — are here to prove that motherhood only inspires us to do more. It’s also got to do with the audience. The audience is not cancelling mothers, [saying] they don’t want to see us on screen anymore. Nothing else that happens in my life impacts my career. So why should having a baby impact it?”

Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt

Parineeti Chopra also appreciated Karan Johar for being supportive of Alia Bhatt, who was pregnant during the shoot of ‘Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani’