Amitabh, SRK, Salman, Rajini never billed staff: KC Bokadia

Veteran filmmaker KC Bokadia has reignited Bollywood’s entourage cost debate with a simple contrast: the industry’s biggest legends, he says, never asked a producer to pick up their personal staff bills.

In a conversation with ANI, the producer-director named Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Rajinikanth as examples of professionalism on set. He argued that today’s production culture often loads costs onto the film that actors could handle themselves.

What Bokadia said about the legends

Bokadia’s praise was specific. He recalled that the four stars did not make productions pay for the people who worked for them personally.

“Amitabh Bachchan never took the salary of his staff. Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Rajinikanth, all of them… They never made producers pay their staff.”

For Bokadia, the point is not nostalgia. It is arithmetic. When a film pays for an actor’s staff, the cost sits on the production’s daily budget, not the actor’s fee.

The vanity-van math

The filmmaker also flagged the demand for extra vanity vans, some with gyms and several staff members. He said the combined cost of maintaining many vans and staff can sharply raise a film’s daily production expenses.

He remembered a different set culture, when actors sat together and shared meals between shots. Now, he noted, many artistes prefer to spend breaks inside their vans.

An appeal, not a complaint

Bokadia urged actors to see filmmaking as a business with shared risk. He put it plainly:

“We come and say, have mercy on the producer. Otherwise, such a day will come, the ones who will give four shoulders will also have to bring it on rent.”

He added that if the producer survives, the actor survives too: “This is a business. The actors should also think, ‘It is a business. If the producer is alive, then we will also be alive.’”

He also offered a small story about Jackie Shroff on a Chennai shoot, then Madras. When Bokadia stepped in after noticing Shroff had been given a double room instead of a suite, the actor was relaxed. His reply, as recalled by Bokadia, was that the room had a good bathroom and they would shoot all day and return at night.

Why this matters for fans

The entourage conversation is not just industry gossip. It shapes the economics of the films that reach the screen. Every additional van, personal staffer and on-set comfort is a line item that can push budgets up, delay shoots or reduce what is left for the film itself.

Bokadia knows the ecosystem from the inside:

• He has spent more than five decades as a producer, director and screenwriter.
• He has produced and directed over 60 films.
• His credits include Teri Meherbaniyan, Pyar Jhukta Nahin and Lal Baadshah.
• His production debut was Rivaaj in 1972, and his directorial debut was Aaj Ka Arjun in 1990.

The names he cites make the appeal hard to dismiss. When Amitabh, SRK, Salman and Rajinikanth could carry their own staff costs, the argument goes, younger and mid-level actors can at least ask whether their comfort is worth the producer’s risk.

Source: The Times of India