In recent times, several television actors have raised concerns about the working culture in the TV industry. Earlier this year, actress Krishna Mukherjee accused TV producer Kundan Singh of harassment on the sets of her Dangal TV show ‘Shubh Shagun’. Actress Ridhima Pandit also claimed that she was “mentally harassed” on one of her shows. Now, in an exclusive interview with News18 Showsha, actor-producer Sargun Mehta has urged actors to speak up if they face any kind of inconvenience on set.
“I feel that work harassment is not something that is only there on television sets. It is there maybe in every field. Even corporate-wise or wherever. I can only suggest that if anything is happening to you on the sets, you should speak up about it. Be candid or vocal about something like this to your producer. I’m sure they will take care of it immediately. I don’t think there is anything to hide,” Sargun, who is an actress, writer and producer also, said.
She further shared that no producer replaces an actor from their show so easily, and therefore, the actors should not hold back from expressing themselves. “For no reason, you will not be ousted from the sets. Actors are not replaced from sets because a producer wants to. They will never be replaced like that. Nobody wants to replace an actor because we have put in our money, hopes. We have spent so many months working on this character. Why would we want to replace an actor for something like this? I feel if there is a genuine conflict that they have, they should speak to them,” added added.
Even though Sargun Mehta started her career as an actor, she’s become a successful producer too. She has produced several popular TV shows including Udaariyaan and Junooniyatt. Being a producer, it gets difficult to manage costs. However, luckily, unlike Bollywood, television producers do not have to deal with high entourage costs.
“With TV actors, you don’t have set teams. You have a set team given by the producer, so everything works within a certain budget. I think everybody knows for a fact that television only works in an X amount of budget. Films have a very flexible budget. Some movies will be made in Rs 18 crores and others might have a budget of Rs 200 crore. There is no fixed budget for a film. In television, there is an X amount of budget that one works with and everybody is familiar with it,” Sargun told us.
While entourage cost may not be an issue for Sargun as a producer, she is currently nervous yet excited as her show Udaariyaan is all set to take a leap of 15 years. Talking about the same, the 35-year-old actress said, “I am equally excited and equally nervous, to be honest. I’m maybe a little bit more nervous because, you know, every time we take a leap, there is something else that pops in my head, I’m like, ‘What if this happens or what if that happens’. But this time, it’s a very young love story. So, this makes me very excited also. I want people to have a conversation so that I can be a part of it and feel like, ‘Okay, this is what I wrote and this is what they interpreted’. It makes me excited and nervous.”
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