Priyanka Chopra says racism pushed her past the breaking point in high school — and shaped her roles as an adult.
“I was bullied by a freshman named Jeanine,” Chopra revealed to Complex for its June/July cover story, speaking about her high school experience in Newton, Mass. “She was black, and supremely racist. Jeanine used to say, ‘Brownie, go back to your country, you smell of curry,’ or ‘Do you smell curry coming?’
“You know when you’re a kid, and you’re made to feel bad about where your roots are, or what you look like? You don’t understand it, you just feel bad about who you are.”
The bullying was so bad that Chopra, now 33, moved back to her native India, where her mom entered her into the Miss India pageant without her knowledge — and she won. It launched her showbiz career, but the “Quantico” star says that her experiences with racism didn’t end there.
“There are so many Indian actors who have crossed over, and have done a lot of work in the West, but they’ve always been made to speak like Apu,” she fumed. “I want to be able to break the stereotype of what Indian people or people of South Asian descent are supposed to be. Nobody’s supposed to be anything. You can be whoever you want. And I want young people to see that.”
Priyanka Chopra’s stunning photos from Complex:
