Radhika Apte Sets Work Limits

“For example, one has to deliver 22-25 mins of content for daily soaps. Now amidst all that, agar aap yeh chochle paalte rahege (if you’ll keep worrying about these things) that ‘I will work for 8 hours or 5 hours’, then how will the work get finished? If you entered this race, then you have to run according to it. If you can’t accept that, then go to a 9-5 job and stay happy there. No one has forced you to be here. It’s better to sleep tired than to sleep frustrated.”

“Once a supervising producer came to me while I was working on Saas Bina Sasural. He told me, ‘Sir, we never hear a complaint about you. You never say anything.’ I told him, ‘What should I complain about? When I used to go for theatre shows, we would sleep in rooms filled with insects. They used to give us durees (rug) to sleep on. You guys have given me a vanity van, fruits, and a bedsheet with my name on it — what should I complain about?'”

“I would like to take you back to my time when I did Hichki because I did the film when my daughter Adira was 14 months old, and I was still breastfeeding her. I had to pump the milk and go in the morning. I have also done it where I have worked a certain number of hours if the producers are okay with it. If not, you don’t do the film. It’s also a choice. Nobody is forcing anything on anybody.”

“The thing is that when we did ‘Mrs Deshpande’, we were working 12-hour shifts every day, like maybe more sometimes. So, I think to each his own. I’m a workaholic. So for me, maybe it’s different, but if a woman has that power and can say, ‘Okay, I want to work these many hours,’ then that’s her (Deepika’s) prerogative, and that’s her life, and that’s how she wants to do it. Then more power to her.”