Actor Gulshan Devaiah reveals the motive behind his recent tweet about favouritism in Bollywood, sparking the nepotism debate, yet again.
Gulshan Devaiah reveals the motive behind his favouritism tweet, but doesn’t want to take names
Bollywood isn’t over the nepotism debate, and actor Gulshan Devaiah has brought up yet another talk point.
On Tuesday, the Shaitan (2011) and A Death In The Gunj (2017) actor got a lot of people curious when he tweeted that “nepotism is just the tip of the iceberg” and that “some actors don’t want to work with certain actors because they are insecure about getting overshadowed and hence veto casting choices by the makers”.
Prod him, and he says, “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I wanted to express something by being honest without trying to be sensational.” By that, he means name-calling. But he admits his post was triggered by something he has faced “more than once”.
“From nepotism to favouritism, we all go through it. I’m sure it happens to others, too,” says Gulshan, adding that he does not want to make it personal by taking names.
Is it an A-lister? “Yes, totally... All kinds of listers. This particular one is definitely... Let me just say it’s somebody who is doing really good for themselves. Somebody who is enjoying their stardom. It could be an actress also... I’m not telling you. I don’t see a point in taking names,” he says.
He goes on, “It will be a sensational story, but everybody knows that then I’m done in this business. I have so much more to contribute and achieve here. I don’t want to drop an axe on my own foot.”
Clarifying that it’s not someone from a “famous family”, he recounted a response on his tweet: “Outsiders apna industry banaa lo”. On that, Gulshan comments, “Outsiders bhi yahi kar rahe hain bhai.”
The actor says he does not want to take names also because he isn’t sure whether the person deserves their name being dragged into the mud. “No, definitely not. Some people do a lot to live out their ambition and to protect their image and their positioning, and they’ll do anything for it.”
The idea behind sharing his experience then, Gulshan points out, is simple. “Sometimes I meet people who look up to me and my work, and I feel it’s important for me to tell them the reality, and to tell them that hard work and being good is not good enough because all this sh*t happens. You have to be prepared to endure this, and find a way out of this, because it can beat you down to the ground,” he explains.
And he wanted to do so “without actually defaming someone”.
Besides his own experience of being ousted from projects, Gulshan says a filmmaker once asked him if he had a problem with a female actor being cast in his film because “she used to date somebody, they broke up and that
Sometimes I meet people who look up to me and my work, and I feel it’s important to tell them the reality... that hard work is not good enough because all this sh*t happens. You have to be prepared to endure...
GULSHAN DEVAIAH ACTOR
person was sabotaging some projects she was working in”.
“That completely shadowed this very pure ideology that good is good enough and hard work will be paid for. It’s not true for all,” he adds.