The high pay disparity in Bollywood isn’t unknown to people, but what might shock them is just how vast the gap really is.
In a recent interview, screenwriter and lyricist Varun Grover opened up about the significant pay disparity between writers like himself and star actors.
Varun is known for projects like All India Rank, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, Masaan, and more. He is also a stand-up comedian, and at the beginning of his career, he worked on television shows.
He worked as a scriptwriter on Oye! It’s Friday!, which was hosted by Farhan Akhtar. That’s when he first realised the extent of the pay disparity between actors and writers.
In the interview, he talked about how, after working on Ranvir Vinay Aur Kaun, he joined Farhan Saab’s Oye! It’s Friday!. It was during this time that he realised there wasn’t much value being added by the performer to the material he was writing for them.
That was also the first time he found out how much actors make from such shows. Even though he had some idea before, he hadn’t assumed the gap would be so wide.
Farhan was being paid Rs 45 lakh per episode, while Varun earned just Rs 45,000.
He added that he was paid so little despite the show having a massive budget and an extravagant set.
His argument was that even though the actor was being paid 100 times more than the writer, he wasn’t adding 100 times more value than the writer was contributing.
Unfortunately, that’s how the pay disparity in the industry works.
A person is paid based on how much they can attract views. If an actor can fill a theatre with their face value, they are paid more.
The name of a writer rarely draws a large audience to the theatres. The last time it truly happened was when the names Salim-Javed were attached to a film.
However, underpaying writers has done more harm to the industry than it realises.
Shows are subpar, original writing is rare, and this has affected the overall quality of films.
If only writers were paid fairly, perhaps audiences would actually be interested in what the actor has to perform, because the foundation, the writing, would finally match the performance it supports.
