Actor, author, and former White House staffer Kal Penn was the latest guest at Express Adda, a platform for candid conversations hosted by The Indian Express Group. During the conversation with Anant Goenka, Executive Director of The Indian Express Group, Kal opened up about a time when he faced severe payment delays while working on an Indian film.
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The actor said, “There was a film I did here years ago, not The Namesake. The rule in the U.S., and maybe here to some extent, is that your salary should go into an escrow account before you show up on set. You can’t touch that money until you’re done with the film, but that way, you know the money’s there and nobody can screw you over. And I, against the advice of my agents, got on the plane and came to India to shoot this film. Because I said, look, in good faith, even though the money’s not there, let me just come. And so I came to India, went through rehearsals… the money still wasn’t there. I started shooting… the money still wasn’t there.”
Kal Penn added how fellow Bollywood actors warned him that he might not get paid, but he was determined to hold to his principles. “And at one point, some of the Bollywood actors in the project said, ‘Hey, you know you’re not ever going to get paid, right?’ I was like, ‘No, no, I am.’ They’re like, ‘No. One day, just don’t turn up, and you’ll get paid.’ I was like, ‘No, I can’t do that. I’m a SAG actor, that’s our union.’ Screen Actors Guild you know? I can’t do that. So the weeks kept going by, and they’re like, ‘Dude, you’re legit just not going to get paid.’ So with, like, three days left to go, I told everybody on set, ‘I’m not coming tomorrow until I get paid.’ And the crew was like, ‘Yeah, finally. Good for you.’ And the producers were like, ‘Okay.’ So that second-to-last day, there’s a phone call: ‘Sir, your car is ready.’ And I said, ‘No, actually, I’m not coming today. You can let the driver go. I haven’t been paid.’ Then, like ten minutes later, one of the financiers calls: ‘Mr. Kalpen, koi problem hai?’ I’m like, ‘I just haven’t been paid, so I can’t come to work.’ We had some strong words after that. He just goes, ‘Okay, just wait in your room. In two hours’ time, my boy will come.’ I’m like, ‘Okay.’”
Kal humorously described the unexpected way the payment was delivered: “Now, I will say this: as a base rule, no matter where we are in the world, we’re, like, never on time for anything. But literally two hours on the dot, there’s a knock at my hotel room door. I look through the peephole and can just see the top of some child’s head. I was like, ‘Oh, he literally sent some boy.’ I open the door, and there’s like a 58-year-old man, four feet tall, wearing a shirt with a panda on it that says I love giraffe. He’s holding a brown paper bag. He hands it to me and just goes, ‘Count it.’ I was like, ‘Alright. Do you want to come in?’ He goes, ‘No.’ So I closed the door, counted it, it was like half of what the guy owed me, in cash. The phone rings. I was like, ‘Uh, actually, this is just half of what you owe me.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, the other half you’ll receive tomorrow.’ I’m like, ‘Okay.’ So I put the money in the safe, fully expecting it to, like, not be there when I came home from work, fully expecting somebody to steal my kidney when I got there.”
Express Adda with Kal Penn
Kal Penn concluded by sharing how the situation was finally resolved and how it contrasted with standard practices in the U.S. “And it was just… fine. I was four hours late to work. The crew was like, ‘Yeah, finally! You did what you had to do.’ The next day, they were just ready with the money. Obviously, I had to then go back to the States with this cash and declare it and fill out all these forms and whatever. That doesn’t usually happen in the States. I’m not saying that happens regularly here anymore.”
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The Express Adda is an ongoing series of informal interactions hosted by The Indian Express Group, featuring prominent voices from various fields. Past guests include Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, the Dalai Lama, philanthropist Bill Gates, and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta.
