Ananya Panday recently opened up during an event on her experience of working with Deepika Padukone on Gehraiyaan and showered praises on her co-star. She revealed that it was Deepika who inspired her to stand up for herself.
Looking back on their time working on the Shakun Batra relationship drama, Ananya shared that Deepika showed her the way on how to speak her mind in a more confident and assured, but polite way.
"When I started out in the industry, I didn't really know that one could really stand up and reinforce what they want. I used to simply do what I was asked to do. Deepika is a woman who stands up for every person on the set, in a very polite way," she said.
The CTRL actress further added, "Whenever a girl speaks up she is called bossy, or difficult to work with, but she used to convey her needs in a very polite and empathetic way, which made me realise that there is a way in which you can do this."
Ananya regarded the experience of working with Deepika as an empowering one, which instilled the value of choosing more consciously in her. "Deepika inspired me as a younger female actress to go on further to make a change. Now I do speak up when I am not comfortable doing certain things or saying certain things, because I don't want a young girl to be spoken to in a certain manner because I am being shown like that on-screen," she remarked.
On the work front, Ananya Panday's recent OTT successes include Call Me Bae, an eight-episode comedy-drama which released on Amazon Prime Video in September, and the Netflix original, CTRL, a sci-fi thriller directed by Vikramaditya Motwane.