Abhishek Banerjee at the studio
Abhishek Banerjee is currently celebrating the success of Stree 2. Alongside his acting career, he has been a dedicated casting director for the past 15 years and is a co-owner of the Mumbai-based casting agency, Casting Bay. In an exclusive interview with NDTV, Abhishek opened up about some strict rules imposed on the employees of the company to ensure a safe working environment for women. He revealed that he has banned arranging meetings outside the office premises and no member of the agency was allowed to text a woman beyond a "certain hour." Abhishek even admitted to having fired employees for breaching this second protocol.
Abhishek Banerjee said, “The first thing we did was that we decided on a rule that we will not do any meetings or none of our employees are allowed to do any meetings outside our office. Because the problem which was really deep-seated was that there was a lot of coffee shop-meeting culture in Bombay. ‘Let's meet at this coffee shop, meet at this restaurant'. We wanted to say ‘No, that's not professional. We are not going to work in a coffee shop. You are not meeting to eat food or have coffee. You are meeting for work. So let's keep it professional. You come to our office, whoever wants to meet, we will give you time. You come, speak to us, and then you go'.”
Elaborating on the stringent time frame of messaging women, Abhishek Banerjee added, “None of our employees are allowed to message female actors after a certain point. If you do that, strict actions will be taken which we have. We have fired employees who have messaged actresses at a certain hour which was probably objectionable. We created a system where women would feel safe,” he said.
In Stree 2, Abhishek Banerjee plays the role of Jana. The Amar Kaushik directorial has been headlined by Shraddha Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao. The film also features Pankaj Tripathi and Aparshakti Khurana in important roles.
Stree 2 marks the second instalment in the Stree series. The first film was released in 2018. The Stree franchise is a part of Dinesh Vijan's horror-comedy universe, which also includes Roohi, Bhediya and Munjya.