Vidya Balan recalls delivering 7 flops, says, ‘two films that worked least were with male heroes’ | Exclusive

Vidya Balan opens up on female representations in films. She recalls delivering 7 flops at some stage in her career and the ones that performed the least were films with male heroes.

Vidya Balan has always a champion for women empowerment, through her films and through her work outside films. The actress recently spoke on a report about representation of women in the industry and said that while things were getting better for women in the industry, the current trend in Bollywood has in many ways derailed the process. Vidya spoke about what the post-pandemic scenario seems like for female-driven films in Bollywood, in an exclusive chat with IndiaToday.in.

Vidya recalled the time when she wondered if she should reconsider her film choices. The actress shared with IndiaToday.in, “Initially, I was made to feel like I was making unconventional choices. In every promotional interview, I get asked, ‘Oh, you're doing another unconventional film?’ Now, I think there are too many unconventional roles that its become conventional. But I think, at some stage, I wondered if I needed to reconsider. I had a spate of successes followed by a spate of films that didn't do well. While I don't really pay attention to what people have to say, but I was wondering if I needed to reconsider my decisions.”

She continued, “I wondered if I had to look at a different kind of film. Maybe I wasn't seeing success because I wasn't doing the ‘so-called’ conventional films. But amongst all the films that I did, and the ones that didn't work, the ones that weren’t female-centric films performed the worst.”

Vidya explained, “I had a spate of seven duds. It breaks my heart to call them flops, but I had seven films that didn't work. So, amongst those, the two films that worked the least, were the ones with male heroes. So, I told myself there's no, there's no math to this. It's about a good film. In my head, I made that note, decided that I should just be authentic and continue to make these choices.”

On the current trend in Bollywood, she told IndiaToday.in, “With theatrical releases now, there is a change post pandemic. While I think people were, anyway, reluctant to invest in the ‘so-called’ female-centric films. With continued success, their minds opened and so did their purses. But now with the pandemic, what's happened is, with a lot of our films not working, they feel ‘if our male hero films are not working, the female hero films don't stand a chance.’”

Vidya called this a scary situation. She mentioned, “That's a very scary situation, because how do you explain to them that there is no logic to this? But then there is proof. Gangubai is a film that stars a female actor and has done well. It is one of the few films that has done well this year, but people sometimes also just look at things in the way that suits them best. So, if it furthers a certain belief, then they’ll just believe that's how it is.”

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