Soni Razdan opens up nepotism debate; says Ananya Panday and Suhana Khan are talented

For the past few years, the word nepotism is plaguing the movie business. With the launch of every star kid, the debate sparks up again. The current dispensation has been going around the debut of Agastya Nanda, Suhana Khan and Khushi Kapoor with Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies. Amongst many posts, one particular post garnered a lot of attention. One netizen wrote, “The people who moan on and on social media about nepotism are people whose parents had careers they would want to stay a million miles away from.” This post caught the attention of Alia Bhatt’s mother and veteran actress Soni Razdan, she shared her take on the nepotism debate.

Reacting to it, she wrote, “Does a child have first right of refusal to a parent’s profession ? Dentists children never seem to get any flack for becoming dentists … also I totally get the feeling. I was an outsider too trying to break in. Wisest words I ever heard were – the world doesn’t owe you a living. If you can’t deal with what it entails find another profession.”
A social media user responded to Soni Razdan’s comment, stating that while subpar nepotistic dentists may not have repeat customers, mediocre nepotistic actors tend to receive numerous opportunities and repeat roles in the industry, to which Soni replied, “It’s you who decide. No like… no see … it’s done and dusted. No more movies. (Unless daddy is funding your movie again and again that’s a different story and not at all about getting preferential casting ops) so it’s basically the same everywhere. You might get a foot in the door but that door has to have a very good reason to open.”

A social media user inquired whether Soni Razdan genuinely believes in the talent of ‘nepo kids’ like Ananya Panday, Suhana Khan, Khushi Kapoor, and others. To which, Soni had this to say, “I think they are all talented people! And so are many others. And thank god for OTT platforms now. So many more roles have opened up for so many more actors. In my youth it was just the films. Not even TV to start with. Can you imagine ! Almost impossible to land a role.”