‘What can I do if people believe in masala stories about nepotism’

She began her career with a film produced by actor Salman Khan; her father — Mohnish Bahl — is an actor himself, and she is the granddaughter of the legendary Nutan. So, it was easy for everyone to assume that Pranutan Bahl did not have to tough it out to enter the film industry. The debate around star kids and people with connections having it easy refuses to die down. Ask the actor, 27, about being called a product of it, and she says, “I feel a little strange about it, and wish people didn’t feed into sensationalism so much. I wish they would ask us, actors, our individual stories.”

October 10, 2016, was the day she walked in for her first audition, and the rounds lasted till 2018, which is when she was noticed by the makers of Notebook, her debut film.

“I never told anybody I belonged to a film family. That was the only way I would get the brutal opinion of a casting director. I didn’t want any, ‘How can we say no to her?’ or ‘We have to call her for a second round’. I don’t lie to myself, I don’t want to be in a cocoon. Notebook was a five-hour long audition and it was not easy,” reveals the actor.

Even actor Salman Khan, she shares, didn’t know about her being cast until the team informed him, contrary to the opinion that he had cast her himself, owing to his friendship with her dad, who he had worked with in multiple films over last many years.

“He called dad and said, ‘You are dead, your daughter is going to be a heroine, it was a good enough audition!’ That’s when he (Khan) also got to know. As far as the nepotism debate therefore is concerned, I don’t know,” she says. People, in fact, don’t believe her when she narrates this incident. “They are quick to judge. I feel everybody has their own journey, even if a film is produced for them by family members. I am not glorifying my journey. I chose this for myself. I don’t understand when there are times I tell people my journey, and they say, ‘What rubbish, you are lying!’ If you want to believe in masala stories (about nepotism), then what can I do?,” she says.

I don’t understand when I tell people my journey, and they say, ‘What rubbish, you are lying!’ PRANUTAN BAHL,

PHOTO: INSTAG RAM/ PRANUTAN Rishabh Suri Actor