Shahid Kapoor, in a January interview with Raj Shamani, spoke about nepotism. He also created an interesting analogy between a racetrack and the advantages and disadvantages when dealing with struggles and failure. This segment starts at the 17:20 mark in the video when Shahid is speaking about failure and feeling victimised by his circumstances, and what he learnt.
He said, “I went through a very long phase of feeling victimised by my circumstances.” He spoke about how he had that kind of life and how “Kuch logon ki struggle BMW mein hoti hai (some people’s struggle is in a BMW). Their starting film is by the country’s top 2-3 directors. I’ve given 250 auditions.”
He then created an interesting analogy: “A very interesting example is that there is a running area of 400 metres. So there was this experiment, a very interesting workshop that I saw a video of, where they told several people that there is a race and now you’ve to run this race. They made different people stand at different points. So then, everybody was like: this is so unfair, somebody is standing at 200 metres, and you made me stand 50 metres behind the starting line.”
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This is not the first time that Shahid Kapoor has spoken about nepotism in the Hindi film industry and how he himself has been affected by it. During a 2024 appearance on Neha Dhupia’s talk show, ‘No Filter Neha,’ he spoke about the existence of camps in Bollywood and his early struggles. He also spoke about how, even though his father, Pankaj Kapoor, is an actor as well, he didn’t get much privilege from it.
Regarding the camp vibe in Bollywood, he said, “When I came into the industry, I realised this is also like a school. Bahar waale ko aasanī se accept nahi karte ye log, inko bada problem hota hai ke tum aa kaise gaye andar. (They don’t accept anyone from outside easily. They have a problem with how you enter the industry.) So for many years, you deal with that.”
Kapoor said, “See, everybody says this ‘Pankaj ka beta hai’ and all that, but you know character actors don’t have any power, only stars and superstars and big film directors and producers have power, so it’s not a big deal. Secondly, I actually stayed with my mum, so I never told anybody because my parents were separated, and there was this whole pride thing that I didn’t want to say anything to anybody, so I never told anybody. Actually, I told my dad that I had signed a film after I signed it. He didn’t even know.”
He’s also mentioned how the struggle has a special place for him in itself, stating, “I love the fact that every step forward required so much effort, and it meant so much, and so the gratification that you felt when you earned it was so solid. It has to be difficult to get something; otherwise, what’s the point of it? If you start struggling in a BMW and then, after a star, you buy another BMW, then what’s the fun of it? You should have travelled on trains, you should have wondered how you’re going to get your photo shoot—it’s real.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Hindustan Times, News18, India.com
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This post is tagged under: Shahid Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor interview, Shahid Kapoor nepotism, Shahid Kapoor star kid, Shahid Kapoor struggle, bollywood, nepotism, star kids, bollywood nepotism
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