From the time of Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind which released in 1939 to most recently #OscarsSoWhite, racism has long plagued Hollywood. Even after many Hollywood A-listers have consistently spoken out against racial discrimination, inequality still persists for artistes of color in the industry; actor Priyanka Chopra is the latest celebrity to open up about facing a color bias in the West.
During an interview with an international magazine InStyle, Chopra, who is the first South-Asian actor to headline an American show, revealed that she lost a movie role in Hollywood because of her "skin color".
"It happened last year. I was out for a movie, and somebody (from a studio) called one of my agents and said, ‘She’s the wrong—what word did they use?—‘physicality.’ So in my defense as an actor, I’m like, ‘Do I need to be skinnier? Do I need to get in shape? Do I need to have abs?’ Like, what does ‘wrong physicality’ mean?”
“And then my agent broke it down for me. Like, ‘I think, Priy, they meant that they wanted someone who’s not brown.’ It affected me," said the actor, who will next be seen in A Kid Like Jake alongside Jim Parsons and Octavia Spencer.
Chopra also spoke out about the wage gap that persists between men and women in the film industry.
“People don’t go watch females in movies because they don’t believe that they can be heroes. The world has to change the way they look at their heroes. Specifically how men can help is changing the ‘locker-room talk’ conversation. Nothing will change until we break the stereotypes of gender in our normal, day-to-day life."
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