Manoj Bajpayee: Bollywood Is Not a Family, It Is Bullsh*t

Manoj Bajpayee is not buying the “one big family” line. While promoting his Netflix thriller Gajab Raat, the 57-year-old actor told Bollywood Hungama that the film industry’s public warmth hides a far more isolated and competitive reality — and that he still does not feel he belongs, decades after starting out.

The fraternity is the first myth to drop

Bajpayee questioned the image of a close-knit film fraternity that fans see at award nights and premieres. He pointed to separate offices, parties that never happen, and phone calls that never come after a good film. “The biggest illusion is that the industry is a fraternity,” he said, adding that no actor feels happy when someone else succeeds, no director considers another better, and no production house cheers another’s profit.

His message to outsiders was simple: do not wait for support. The industry, as he described it, is not a support system but a set of individual battles. For anyone entering the business, that changes the checklist — survival belongs to the prepared, not the well-connected.

Come alone, leave alone

Bajpayee also pushed back on the idea that newcomers should expect guidance. “You’ve come alone, and if at all you are leaving, you’ll be leaving alone,” he said. He added, with a laugh, that he may be the wrong person to ask for that advice because he keeps to himself: he does the work, takes his fee and goes home.

That detachment extends to praise and criticism. He told listeners that critics are welcome to stay home, and that even good words barely reach him. His point, framed bluntly, is that the industry is “bullsh*t” when it calls itself a family, and everyone is fighting their own battle.

He distinguished discipline from luck: while many actors succeed without it, he has preferred order since childhood. The discipline is not a guarantee, but it is the preparation he trusts.

What he wants to change

Asked what bothers him most, Bajpayee listed problems that should sound familiar to any workplace, not just film sets:

• Equality — he wants the same food for everyone on a set.
• Interaction — actors once sat together between shots and even met in the evening; now they retreat to vans and phones.
• Access — layers of managers make even a simple conversation with young actors complicated.

His larger concern is that a creative industry is forgetting how to meet, talk and collaborate. The phone and hierarchy, he argued, are killing the interaction that once made filmmaking feel alive.

Bajpayee said he has tried to stay approachable, which is why many of his recent collaborators are new directors. His manager, he added, makes sure calls are not missed. That practice may be the clearest takeaway: in a field where nobody is coming to help you, being reachable is a form of self-marketing.

Source: The Times of India