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Priyanka Chopra’s manager reveals the challenges they faced early on in Hollywood: ‘People told me I was stupid…’
Priyanka Chopra's longtime manager remembers their struggles in Hollywood
Global icon Priyanka Chopra Jonas began her career as an actor with Bollywood. After making it big in the Indian film industry, becoming a household name, the star set out to carve a niche in Hollywood. It all began when she bagged the American thriller series Quantico, becoming the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series. And since then, it has been upwards and onwards. However, the journey was not easy and Priyanka faced many hurdles along the way, about which her longtime manager Anjula Acharia has now opened up.
Recently during an appearance on The Ok Sweetie Show, Priyanka Chopra’s longtime manager Anjula Acharia shared, “People told me I was stupid when I bought Priyanka. Everyone was like, ‘You can’t break a brown Bollywood star in America’. I went to Jimmy (the cofounder of Interscope Records) because we had signed her together through a label deal at Interscope. I was having one of my insecure moments. There weren’t very many, and I was like, ‘Jimmy, people are saying that I’m crazy,’ and he goes, ‘Do you know everyone thought I was crazy when I wanted to launch a white rapper whose name was Eminem.’”
Anjula remembered, “Imagine this: you are with the Beyonce of a country, but nobody else knows that she is Beyonce. Just you do. And she is introducing herself and saying, ‘You don’t know who I am, but I’m Priyanka Chopra.’ I’m meeting the assistant of the assistant in a cafeteria with her. I was suffering from heartbreak for her, but she was so fabulous. She has no ego. Priyanka has actually taught a lot of humility. There have been a lot of times where I have been like, ‘We don’t have to do this,’ but she is like, ‘No, yeah we do.’ There have been very specific moments where I’m like, ‘We are above this,’ and she is like, ‘No, we are not’.”
At the moment, Priyanka is busy gearing up for her next Hollywood film The Bluff, which is set to release on Prime Video on February 25. The actor is also going to make her comeback to Indian cinema with Mahesh Babu and SS Rajamouli’s film Varanasi.
