Parineeti Chopra has a problem with the idea that motherhood should redraw only one parent’s working life. In a conversation with Gulf News in Dubai, the actor argued that parenting is a shared contract, not a role that society gets to assign by gender.
Chopra, who married Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha in 2023, said the assumption that ‘the mother is the default parent’ remains the hidden script for many households. The result, she added, is that a father can become a ‘visiting parent’ while the mother absorbs all the changes.
Her own arrangement, she said, is built on alternation: ‘When I’m at work, he’s with the baby. When he’s at work, I’m with the baby.’ She was careful not to prescribe that model for everyone. Economic realities, she said, make every household’s division of labour legitimate; what matters is whether both partners intend to share the load.
Why this matters in Hindi cinema
The comments land in an industry that has historically treated an actress’s marriage or motherhood as a career inflection point, while male stars seldom face the same scrutiny about childcare. Chopra’s insistence that the child is ’50-50 the parents’ pushes back on that framing. For readers who track Hindi cinema’s long memory, it is less a celebrity talking point than a public contract offered by a working actor.
- Parenting split with Raghav Chadha: 50-50, with care alternated around work.
- Career self-assessment: she signed films she knew would not work but does not regret them.
- Physical transformation for Amar Singh Chamkila: 16 kilos gained after Imtiaz Ali asked her to resemble Amarjot Kaur.
Owning the wrong choices
Chopra was equally direct about her filmography. She made her debut in Ladies vs Ricky Bahl in 2011 and built an early run with Ishaqzaade, Shuddh Desi Romance and Hasee Toh Phasee. But she said there were also films she should not have signed: she took them knowing they were wrong choices, and knew on set that they would not work.
She attributed some of that to inexperience. Not being from a film family, she said, meant she did not always understand scripts or what audiences wanted. Yash Raj Films helped her early on; when that support was not available, her selection process faltered. She now works about six months a year and has no nostalgia for the image of the perpetually busy actor.
Chamkila as the turning point
For Chopra, Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila on Netflix was the clearest pivot. Ali told her she did not physically resemble Amarjot Kaur, the musician’s wife and singing partner. Chopra asked for three months and returned having gained 16 kilos. ‘I would have done 50,’ she said, adding that she would have gone bald if the part required it. The process cost her emotionally and professionally, she acknowledged, but she does not frame those costs as a sacrifice she regrets.
She drew a similar line around her private life. Chopra said she would never have considered marrying an actor, because she did not want entertainment to be the only thing in her life. She lives quietly outside Mumbai, travels when not working, and returns to the city mainly for shoots.
A different motherhood on screen
Her current series Shak: Trust No One shows the opposite of her own parenting story. Chopra plays Anvita, a mother whose child’s disappearance consumes her for eight years and devastates the family around her. The character, she said, was never meant to be a cleanly sympathetic victim; her grief makes everyone around her suffer.
That contrast may be the point. Off screen, Chopra seems to be arguing for a life in which work, family, travel and health share the calendar. She rejects the phrase ‘work-life balance’ as contradictory, because work is part of life. Her summary was simple: ‘Where I am is exactly where I wanted to be.’
Source: Gulf News
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