An interview with actor Gul Panag begins with a rather serious question. She has not been the regular bare and dare kind of heroine, has it worked against her? “Who cares?” Gul retorts back with a shrug. She says, “Mantra of my life is to do everything on my own terms and I will always stick to it. If I don’t feel like doing something I just will not.”
Gul’s upcoming movie Hello Darling is a comedy that highlights the issue of sexual harassment at work place. Ask her if she has ever had a personal experience of sexual harassment, she says, “I think there are some people who can’t handle propositions and some people who can. And I think I belong to the latter category, ” she says smartly.
In this film Gul plays a professional who is very good at her work but is unable to climb the ladder of success as she is not willing to give in to her boss’s sexual advances. And this film also stars Isha Koppikar and Celina Jaitley. Gul says,”There are very few films that are women oriented and this is not just true of India but of the world. I just guess that film-makers are tuned to focus more on men.” She adds, “And the fact that I am part of one of the few films that deals with the issues of women, made a good experience for me to work in.”
Three women on the sets, were there cat fights? Gul says with a smile, “Traditionally, when more than one woman is working together on a film, to help the marketing of the film stories of fight between the heroines is leaked out. We get trapped in these kind of strategies. Also, we were not on the sets to be friends with each other but as colleagues we worked quite well.”
Gul is pretty excited about her future projects. She says, “I have two very interesting projects coming up. Turning 30 by Prakash Jha and Fatso of the Pritish Nandy. “