Bhumi Pednekkar recently appeared on the latest episode of Sit With Hitlist, and she had some interesting things to share from her life. She got candid about getting thrown out of film school for low attendance, paying her student loan from a Rs 7,000 starting salary, which she received from Yash Raj Films when she joined their casting team and much more.
Here’s what she shared…
Bhumi Pednekkar reveals her first paycheque
Interestingly, Bhumi started her career as a casting director with Yash Raj Films. Recalling her first paycheque, she shares, “Getting a monthly salary of Rs 7,000 rupees when I started, for me was a lot of money. It`s a blessing.”
When asked what her last salary at YRF was, she revealed, “I think it was a lakh and fifty.”
Talking about the job and her condition back then, she shares, “YRF happened to me at a time when I needed grounding and that`s why that seven thousand rupees felt like seventy crores. I needed those seven thousand rupees to survive because I wasn`t taking any money from home. My father was unwell, there was a lot going on at home, and I just felt like you don`t want to add to it.”
She reflected back on times she repaid her student loan of Rs 13 lakh, saying, “I had the student loan on me, it was a lot of money. It was 13 lakhs. Rs 4000 would go as my EMI, and the rest would be for my rickshaw, sev poori. I was a teenager, I was a 17-year-old, who could live on Rs 100 a day. I had rich friends, so they took care of me. They were really kind.”
Bhumi recalls being thrown out of film school and bagging a job with YRF
She reveals, “I was thrown out of film school, Whistling Woods, because my attendance was very poor.”
Further sharing how she landed the YRF job, Bhumi recalls, “A friend of mine was the chief AD on Kurbaan and he told me YRF is starting a department, a casting department, because there were no casting directors then. Abhimanyu Ray was literally one of the first few casting directors. YRF was the first large production house or studio that dedicated a department to casting.”
Recalling her interview, she shares, “I went and I had a resume that only had likeI had done my A-levels and studying simultaneously but thrown out of film school because of lack of attendance. So that doesn`t say a lot about my great personality or my work ethic. I went in for this interview, and I clearly did not impress Abhimanyu sir at all and I did not get the job.”
“Then two months after that interview, I got a call from Abhimanyu sir`s assistant, and he said, ‘You are needed, you come. Two of the women we had hired have decided that they want to go to America and study. We need you.’ And that`s how I landed the job,” she recalls.