Actors leave films all the time. It happens every other week. Verbal deals are made over cocktails and wines and forgotten by morning. Sometimes even after signing the dotted lines, things go up in flames.
Be is creative differences, scheduling conflicts, or just a massively misplaced, inflated ego, showbiz thrives on the impermanent. Everything is a mood, and sometimes moods in Bollywood change faster than the weekend box-office numbers.
If Aamir Khan hadn’t rejected Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Darr, or Swades, Shah Rukh Khan might never have become the romantic messiah of the 1990s or shown us his anti-hero and adarsh balak side. Aamir’s refusals didn’t make him unprofessional; they became trivia night anecdotes. He didn’t get villainised for walking away, nor did it stop him from later working with the same filmmakers or production houses.
Even when AR Murugadoss openly complained about Salman Khan’s on-set behaviour during Sikandar, the headlines didn’t implode with words like “unprofessional,” “overpaid,” or “undeserving.” Nobody called for his fees to be slashed or his stardom to be re-evaluated.
Murugadoss mentioned that Salman would turn up on set around 8 pm, which, for day scenes, is practically midnight in filmmaking terms. The crew ended up shooting “daylight” under VFX trickery and harsh artificial lights. Child actors, some barely awake, were reportedly filming “after school” scenes at two in the morning, their heads nodding between takes. Murugadoss, diplomatically, called the process “not easy.”
But when Deepika Padukone walked out of two big-ticket projects—Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Spirit and Nag Ashwin’s Kalki 2—it turned into a national scandal. Suddenly, her professionalism was up for debate, her temperament was under scrutiny, and her right to draw boundaries was treated like a personal affront to Indian cinema.
Quite arguably, Deepika is one of the few female superstars still standing in Bollywood. The kind whose name still guarantees opening weekend numbers, who can carry a film without being propped up by a man’s shadow. So, she should be able to make certain professional demands and be met with a modicum of respect. That clearly has not been the case.
The Eight-Hour Shift
Spirit was supposed to pair Deepika with Prabhas under Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s direction: a combination designed to print money. Kalki 2 would have been a continuation of a massively ambitious sci-fi franchise.
Depending on which “source” you believe, Deepika either left because her role was reduced, was dropped for being “uncooperative,” or walked away after negotiations soured over pay and profit-sharing. There are whispers about creative disagreements, scheduling conflicts, and “unreasonable conditions.”
But what has somehow become the centrepiece of this saga is her supposed "demand" for an eight-hour shift. That’s it.
The reports say Deepika wanted fixed working hours so she could balance her professional and personal life after becoming a mother. Given the consequent reactions she received, you’d think she’d suggested dismantling capitalism overnight.
Interestingly, Deepika isn’t the first actor to mention shorter working days. Ajay Devgn has supported the idea of eight-hour workdays for film crews and actors alike. Rani Mukerji recently said she shot Hichki in shifts after her daughter Adira was born. But there’s a difference: Rani is married to Aditya Chopra, the man who literally owns one of Bollywood’s biggest studios, and Hichki is a Yash Raj Films production. This must have made timing negotiations go over more smoothly.
Deepika, on the other hand, neither comes from a film family nor did she marry into a legacy; she built one. From her debut in Om Shanti Om to Padmaavat to Piku, she has managed that near-impossible balance of mainstream success and artistic risk. She’s one of the few Hindi film actors with actual international visibility — the face of luxury brands, a Cannes regular, and now a new mother navigating an industry allergic to female autonomy.
Deepika herself pointed out this hypocrisy recently: male superstars have been working on fixed-hour shifts for years, often refusing night shoots or long outdoor schedules, and nobody bats an eye. Their “discipline” is celebrated. When a woman asks for the same, it’s rechristened “tantrum.” So the question isn’t really about hours. It’s about who gets to ask for more and still be respected.
The Forgotten History of the Eight-Hour Day
The eight-hour workday was not born in a luxury boardroom. It was fought for, literally, with blood, sweat, and strikes. Industrial workers in the 19th century risked their lives demanding the right to split the day evenly between work, rest, and life. That’s the legacy of the eight-hour shift: it’s not a luxury; it’s a labour right.
More so, the eight-hour shift was built on the assumption that men worked in factories while women stayed home doing the unpaid, invisible labour of running those households.
Now that women make up nearly half the global workforce, that old balance doesn’t hold. The eight-hour, five-day week—once revolutionary—is starting to look outdated. Around the world, experiments with shorter workdays and four-day weeks are gaining traction, acknowledging that modern labour isn’t just physical fatigue but emotional and cognitive overload. The future of work is moving towards rest and flexibility, except, ironically, in the film industry.
The entertainment industry, of course, has always existed outside those norms. The chaos of film production is romanticised as artistic passion. Crew members, assistants, makeup artists—the entire ecosystem functions without fixed boundaries. Exhaustion is a badge of honour, and burnouts are rebranded as dedication.
There are unions for some crafts, yes, but the system largely runs on personal equations and unspoken hierarchies. It’s an industry that has mastered the art of blurring the line between glamour and exploitation.
Gendered Policing of Professionalism
The bottom line is that male actors walk away from films all the time. They demand reshoots, rewrite contracts, delay releases. They are called “perfectionists” or “method actors.” A woman does it, and she’s immediately framed as unstable or ungrateful.
The outrage isn’t really about Deepika’s hours; it’s about her refusal to play nice.
What Deepika’s demand exposes is not diva behaviour but the industry’s deep-seated discomfort with women who know their worth and speak their minds. This is the same industry that still doesn’t have comprehensive maternity clauses or mental health protocols. It also praises “dedicated” actors who shoot through injuries and breakdowns.
Ideally, Deepika should be able to skip Spirit and Kalki 2 without a character assassination. This manufactured hysteria around her exit reveals less about her and more about Bollywood’s resistance to change. But something’s gotta give, and soon.
(The author is an independent film, TV and pop culture journalist who has been feeding into the great sucking maw of the internet since 2010. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)