Celebrity makeup artist Namrata Soni, who has worked with Bollywood stars like Sonam Kapoor, recently appeared on an episode of Masoom Minawala’s podcast, The Masoom Minawala Show. Masoom shared the video of their interaction on Instagram on June 17.
Couldn’t women work as makeup artists in Bollywood?
In the clip, Namrata talks about struggling to work in Bollywood because of a decades-old industry rule that barred women from working as makeup artists. She recounted her battle against the system and a powerful union that sought to keep her and many other women out of the profession.
Sharing the video on Instagram, Masoom wrote, “A 59-year-old union banned women from doing makeup on Bollywood sets. When @namratasoni decided to challenge it, she received threats saying they would cut off her hands. Most people would have walked away. She chose to fight. This is the story of how one woman refused to let an industry decide what she could or couldn’t do.”
Namrata Soni’s fight against a 59-year-old union
During the interview, Masoom inquired about the 59-year-old union that banned women from doing makeup on Bollywood sets, and about an article she had read that mentioned that Namrata’s mother received a threatening call from Film City. On the call, they had told her mother that they had cut off Namrata’s hands. The makeup artists confessed that the whole situation was ‘very scary.’
She shared that earlier, in Bollywood, only men were allowed to do makeup on Bollywood celebs, and women were allowed to do hair. So, when the makeup artists decided to fight the system and continue working, her father opposed it. Upset, he told her, ‘You need to stop doing this. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.’
However, she refused and told her dad, “How can someone tell me – I live in a country where we have a woman president, we live in a secular country – and they are telling me what I can or cannot do with my life, with my career.”
Namrata confessed that at that moment she decided not to agree to this and to fight against it. “I knew for a fact that I was not going to keep quiet about it,” she added.
Who is Namrata Soni?
Namrata Soni is a renowned makeup artist who has reached audiences in a range of mediums, from magazine covers to feature films and Ad films. Apart from movies, she also works with celebrities, including Sonam Kapoor, Huma Qureshi, Rani Mukerji, and even Natasha Poonawalla.
