Varun Grover exposes shocking pay gap with Farhan Akhtar as TV host, hints that is why he quit writing for the medium

Varun Grover has made a shocking revelation, and it is with regards to pay gap between writers and artists. Grover, known for his works like Masaan and Superboys of Malegaon, had been making headlines for Homebound. More recently, though, he made news for revealing the reality between a writer and TV host's pay gap. He cited the example of Farhan Akhtar and hinted it is why he left working for the medium.

Varun Grover hints he stopped working on TV after learning of huge pay gap between writers and TV hosts

Varun Grover was actively writing for TV shows, till one day, he quit. This happened while working with Farhan Akhtar on Oye! It's Friday! During his interview with The Lallantop, the writer spilled, "Once I learnt about it – maybe it’s false information and somebody told me this only to provoke me; I can’t say for sure – I realised the gap was huge. He (Farhan Akhtar) was being paid ₹45 lakh for each episode, while I was earning just ₹45,000."

Why is Varun Grover back in news?

Varun Grover has made his debut as a director and it happens with the short film, KISS. The movie has made rounds of Film Festivals and is back in news ahead of its OTT premiere.

About KISS

KISS is scheduled to be out on MUBI soon. The movie, Grover discussed with OTTplay, was inspired from an article that suggested the Censor Board edit out kissing scenes by number of seconds. "Either they are not okay with the kissing scene, and they can say, remove all of it, but to reduce the duration of it felt bizarre. So that got me thinking, and I thought, okay, I should write something about it, but not in a funny way. I wanted to understand where this kind of thinking comes from, and I wanted to have a slightly empathetic look at this and at the people who make sense of good and... I don't know, an empathetic or analytical kind of psychoanalytical view," the writer recalled as the base for his short film.