One of the highest paid Indian actor Priyanka Chopra has lately been running on a very tight schedule. While her film The White Tiger releases today, the Fashion actor is also gearing up for the release of her much awaited memoir Unfinished which is set to hit the screen on February 9.
PeeCee in a recent interview opened up about the racist bullying that she faced as a 15-year-old in an American high school. She confessed that she took the racist remarks hurled at her to her heart. This left her highly disturbed and she closed herself in a shell. She wished to be invisible and prayed to remain unnoticed.
“My confidence was stripped. I’ve always considered myself a confident person, but I was very unsure of where I stood, of who I was,” the 38-year-old actor revealed. In Unfinished, the actor recalls how other teenage girls in her school would call out to her using abuses like, ‘Brownie, go back to your country!’ or ‘Go back on the elephant you came on’ when she walked down the hall.
In order to escape the racial prejudice, Priyanka started ignoring her bullies and sought shelter within a close group friends. She also reached out to a guidance counsellor for help but to no avail. She said she does not blame the city or the culture but feels that her bullies, were very young at that time, just wanted to say something bad to make sure that it would hurt. PeeCee now feels that her bullies were ‘insecure’ but their behaviour deeply affected her.
As she was not able to handle the discrimination, the actor after convincing her parents returned back to India. “I was so blessed that when I went back to India, I was surrounded by so much love and admiration for who I was. Going back to India healed me after that experience in high school,” the Quantico star revealed. “In America, I was trying not to be different. Right? I was trying to fit in and I wanted to be invisible. When I went to India, I chose to be different,” she added.
