Baywatch star Priyanka Chopra describes losing movie role because of her skin colour

Priyanka Chopra has revealed that she once lost out on a film role because of her skin colour, in a revealing interview with InStyle magazine.

“It happened last year,” she told InStyle. “I was out for a movie, and somebody [from the studio] called one of my agents and said, ‘She’s the wrong’ -what word did they use? – ‘physicality.'”

Understandably, Chopra wanted a more detailed explanation. “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,'” she said. “It affected me.”

The actress also told InStyle that she believes her colour affects how she’s paid within the industry. “No one will say that a woman is getting paid less because she’s a woman of colour, but the numbers mostly end up reflecting that,” she told the magazine.

In 2017, Chopra made her Hollywood live-action film debut playing the antagonist Victoria Leeds in Seth Gordon’s action comedy Baywatch, alongside Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, following a long career in Bollywood.

Chopra also appears in a leading role in the action TV series Quantico, about how a team of FBI recruits deal with rumours of a terrorist in their ranks.

Audiences will next see the actress in A Kid Like Jake, alongside Claire Danes, Octavia Spencer and Jim Parsons, a film centred around a young couple who realise their son’s non-gender conforming play may be more than a phase.

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