Amid Deepika Padukone-Sandeep Reddy Vanga's row, Sonali Bendre says she kept working till she delivered her child: 'I don't know...'

Bollywood is a fast-paced industry in which actresses are expected to work diligently, and some have defied expectations by continuing to shoot during pregnancy. However, questions are often raised about the work culture, and this issue has garnered more attention after Deepika Padukone's exit from Sandeep Reddy Vanga's upcoming film Spirit. Reportedly, Padukone had differences over working hours with the makers, and she wanted an eight-hour shift after the birth of her daughter Dua.

Sonali Bendre, one of the popular 90s actresses, who acted in films such as Sarfarosh, Diljale, and Hum Saath Saath Hain, spoke about taking a break from her work due to pregnancy and carrying the responsibility of motherhood. In a conversation with ANI, she said, "I turned into a mother..I acted till..I was doing a play with Farooq Shaikh..we have lost him..it was called Aapki Soniya, which was a sequel to Tumhari Amrita. And I was pregnant at that point of time. Literally at the end of it, I break down and stuff like that. And I remember that about... eight months pregnant at least, because we were sitting and doing it. I would do it. And then, you know, that when I would break down, I would, the baby was giving me these kicks and there was so much happening. And I'm like, am I scarring this child? I don't know what is happening, but yeah. So till then I did this. So I kept working till I literally delivered the child", she added.

Citing the reason for taking breaks, she said, "The breaks were when I was bringing up the child. And I really felt that if I brought a child into this world, I needed to give it the time. And I enjoyed that tremendously. That was a role that I was playing. And I think I did take a break from fiction. But I was doing non-fiction because non-fiction for me in my business or line of work is the closest going to a 9 to 5 job where I could, put in, these two days I work and I come back and I could have a pattern. When you do fiction, then there are outdoors, you're into a role, you're playing a character. Are you getting it back with you? There were multiple things. I really couldn't do justice to it at that point of time. The second break that happened was when I started with a TV show Ajeeb Daastaan Hai Yeh. While I was doing, the cancer diagnosis came through and then the healing process again." 

The actress was diagnosed with metastatic cancer in 2018. She flew to the United States of America for treatment and was later declared cancer-free in 2021. After she came back to India, Sonali DID Li'ls Masters 5 in 2022 and India's Best Dancer 3 in 2023. She also made her streaming debut in the ZEE5 newsroom drama series The Broken News, whose first season premiered in 2022 and the second season came out in 2024. She will be seen in a crime drama web series with Ali Fazal, based on the 1978 Geeta and Sanjay Chopra kidnapping and murder case, also known as the Ranga-Billa case.

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