Ananya Panday recalls dad Chunky ‘sitting at home’ for long periods as he didn’t have work, says nobody was outside their house to catch his glimpse

Ananya Panday recalled growing up at a time when her father, Chunky Panday, was having a rough run professionally.

New Delhi | November 27, 2024 10:00 AM IST

3 min read

Ananya Panday opened up about her father, Chunky Panday.

Actor Ananya Panday, who once courted controversy when she said that her father, Chunky Panday, wasn’t ever invited to the chat show Koffee with Karan, opened up about seeing him sit at home during a phase when he didn’t have much work. Ananya said that she was born when Chunky’s career was on the decline, and she has seen him go through tremendous ups and downs in his career, which have made her more grounded about success and failure.

Appearing on Raj Shamani’s podcast, Ananya spoke about witnessing her dad’s fluctuating career. She said, “My dad was having a low phase when I was born. He was a huge actor in the ’80s and ’90s, but after that, he started doing different kinds of work. There were long periods of time when he wasn’t working. I would see him sitting at home. When I was a child, I must’ve been to a film set only once or twice with him. It wasn’t like he was very busy and doing lots of work. People weren’t standing outside our house to get a glimpse of him, I didn’t grow up seeing that.”

Also read – ‘Shah Rukh Khan helped with my homework, taught me how to ride a bike’: Ananya Panday calls SRK ‘the definition of an emotionally available man’

Ananya also listed what she would like to imbibe from her dad, and what she wouldn’t. She said, “I would like to pick up his versatility, and his openness to change. He’s played all kinds of roles. He’s played the lead roles, he’s played the smaller roles, he’s played negative roles. He’s done movies in every possible language. He’s been very open to change, which I feel is a lovely thing.” Opening up about the differences in opinion that she sometimes has with her dad, she said, “Because he’s from a different school of cinema and acting, he feels that commercial films are the most important.”

She explained, “The generation of actors that I’m in, we want to do a little bit of everything. That’s something that me and my dad disagree on. He would love to see me in those big, masala commercial films like he’s done. And I am like, ‘No’. I would rather play a big role in a small film than a small role in a big film. But his perception is also changing. After Call Me Bae, he was very proud. He was like, ‘I would not have advised you, at this point in your career, to do an OTT show, but seeing the love you’re getting for this, you do what you want to do’.”

Ananya has had a pleasant run recently, having appeared in the Netflix films Kho Gaye Hum Kahan and CTRL, and in the Prime Video show Call Me Bae.

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