Priyanka Chopra has taken both Hollywood and Bollywood by storm. However, when you reach such a huge level of fame, negativity and undue criticism always manages to manifest.
Chopra recently opened up about the difficult side of fame, revealing she receives the most negativity from her own community.
“I do notice a sense of protectiveness from a lot of people but also a sense of cynicism from a lot of people and a sense of negativity from a lot of people. Picking on me for no reason,” she admitted on BBC Asian Network’s Beyond Bollywood podcast.
The 37-year-old recalled she was discussing her situation with fellow actress Mindy Kaling, where she was asked exactly why she receives so much backlash.
“I was talking about this to Mindy [Kaling] a couple of months ago,” Chopra said. “We were talking about, ‘why is it that you get so much negativity from your own community’?”
The actress recently opened up about her life in her new biography .
Chopra, who is married to Nick Jonas, took the opportunity to apologise for previously promoting skin-lightening creams.
In particular in an advert for Pond’s, the plotline centred around Chopra playing a darker-skinned woman who lost her partner to a lighter-skinned woman. The storyline saw Chopra use the Pond’s skin-lightening product to eventually win the man back.
The controversy surrounding the advert re-emerged in 2020 when Chopra shared her public support for the Black Lives Matter movement last year, with people pointing out she had previously been paid to promote skin-lighteners.
List of Indian actors who are speaking on BLM and their fairness cream ads, a thread : pic.twitter.com/yUeRNLch6U
— anti pigeon (@aluminiummaiden) May 31, 2020
The 38-year-old reflected upon her childhood, admitting her darker skin had made her feel “unattractive”, leaving her self-worth diminished.
“I thought about how pained I’d felt when I was called kaali [a derogatory term meaning dark-skinned] as a child,” she said in her memoir. “I was now promoting the destructive messages that had so eaten away at my sense of self-worth when I was growing up, and I knew the only person I could blame was myself.”
She went on to say that appearing in those campaigns are one of her “most profound regrets”.
She also added she was “deeply sorry” for her actions.
