Rhea Kapoor shares struggles of being a female producer, thinks she had it tougher than Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra
Rhea Kapoor said that it was challenging to be a female producer in the male-dominated industry and said that if she was a man, like Karan Johar or Aditya Chopra, she might have been taken more seriously in the beginning.
Producer Rhea Kapoor opened up about what it is like to be a woman in the ‘male-dominated’ film industry and said that she was seen with a patronising eye when she first entered Bollywood. She was speaking on Kareena Kapoor Khan’s radio show, What Women Want.
“Women are very good at taking responsibility, but I think that the way people react to women in positions of authority is a challenge. It’s a lot more challenging for a woman to take a producer’s mantle and say, ‘You know what? I am taking responsibility for this and you all are going to take me seriously.’ You need to prove yourself over and over and over again. It’s a male-dominated industry,” she said.
Rhea acknowledged the privilege that comes with being actor Anil Kapoor’s daughter and said that she was “very aware” that it was the “only reason” she could become a producer at the age of 21. “But I was not stupid, I was smart. Sonam (Kapoor, sister) and I, of course, love beautiful things. We love clothes and all these things, so people assume that I am stupid and a bimbo, and I only care about these things, and that was fine. I think a lot of women deal with this kind of bias,” she said.
“When I started to work, I was faced with a lot of patronising attitudes like, ‘She is just here playing film-film. She is not really serious about it.’ Or that I was stupid or I didn’t know what I was talking about. And if I face that as Anil Kapoor’s daughter, I can’t imagine what other women go through. You feel very demotivated because making a film is anyway a mammoth task,” she added.
Rhea said that while her crew was not disrespectful to her as they only cared about doing their jobs, she faced a lot of sexism in the boardroom. “A lot of attitude comes in when you are making big money decisions. It comes in when dealing with the actors, especially male actors, managers and agents. Even female agents, you would be surprised,” she said.
Rhea went on to compare her journey to male industry insiders who became producers and said that they were not dismissed from the word go. “I think that if I was a big actor’s son or a big producer’s son like Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar, who of course have achieved a lot, but they were all beginning at one point. I don’t want to minimise what they went through but I get a sense that they were taken seriously at face value. It is the most frustrating thing for a creative person. I can still deal when I am on set and people are being obnoxious to me. At least, let me get there,” she said.
Rhea went on to compare her journey to male industry insiders who became producers and said that they were not dismissed from the word go. “I think that if I was a big actor’s son or a big producer’s son like Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar, who of course have achieved a lot, but they were all beginning at one point. I don’t want to minimise what they went through but I get a sense that they were taken seriously at face value. It is the most frustrating thing for a creative person. I can still deal when I am on set and people are being obnoxious to me. At least, let me get there,” she said.
Rhea made her debut as a producer in 2010 with Rajshree Ojha’s Aisha, starring her sister Sonam Kapoor in the titular role. She followed it up with Khoobsurat (2014) and Veere Di Wedding (2018).
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