You can always trust Neena Gupta to be her candid self always, and she was the same during her recent podcast with daughter Masaba Gupta. She recalled how after her comeback she was confident that she is quite popular. Albeit, she later realized that people in smaller towns only know her from the 1993 film Khalnayak’s song ‘Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai’.
Recalling the incident when she was shooting with Jackie Shroff and no one knew her, Neena talked to Masaba on Luminary, “In a lot of places, especially the smaller towns and cities, people don’t know my work in Badhaai Ho or Saans, they only know me for Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai, till today. I just shot a film called Sabun with Jackie (Shroff). We were shooting in a lot of small places for that… Mahim, Vikhroli. People would crowd around to watch us shoot. The producers gave a bouncer to accompany me. But no one knew me there. Those who recognised me only recognised me for Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai. We forget that most Indian homes don’t have OTT, they have television.”
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Neena revealed further that during the film’s shoot, people were going “crazy for Jackie” but “no one even looked at me”. She said, “He was a hero, he was a star.”
When Masaba asked Neena if one’s popularity on social media has anything to do with real life, Neena said, “It is all about how commercially popular you are.”
She further added, “Equating popularity with how many million followers you have doesn’t really mean anything, that doesn’t mean you are popular. I have done so much work and I used to think I am very popular. I just realised how less popular I am when I was shooting for Sabun.”
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Stating how the number of followers can only make oneself happy but it doesn’t really translate into anything, Neena further mentioned, “I came back home and studied and found out that we are only making ourselves happy by looking at how many followers we have. It means nothing. Your benchmark is how much work you are getting, how much money you are getting and your film has to be a hit. Your work has to be seen by people.”
The actress was seen in the web series ‘Charlie Chopra’ and in the Netflix anthology ‘Lust Stories 2’.
