News Analysis India

Tag: Oscar nomination

  • Just pissed me off: Priyanka on Aussie journo questioning her credentials

    By PTI

    Actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas says she usually doesn’t get bothered by people’s opinions but she was “pissed off” when an Australian journalist questioned her qualification for announcing Oscar nominations last year.

    In March last year, an Australian entertainment journalist tweeted wondering why the 39-year-old actor and her musician-husband Nick Jonas were roped in to unveil nominees for the 93rd Academy Awards.

    Chopra Jonas posted a staunch reply to the journalist as she shared a video listing over 60 acting credits from her almost two-decade-long career – at home in Bollywood, including “Mary Kom”, “7 Khoon Maaf”, “Bajirao Mastani”, her international debut with the ABC series “Quantico” to her Hollywood feature debut “Baywatch”.

    Chopra Jonas has now opened up about the exchange during a recent interview with Vanity Fair.

    “I usually don’t get mad, but that just pissed me off,” the “Matrix Resurrections” star said.

    She further said she usually confides in her family when she feels low and doesn’t seem to get affected by people’s opinions.

    “I’ll be mad, I’ll be angry, I’ll be annoyed. I’ll speak about it to my family. I might cry a little bit, but it doesn’t change my relationship with my work and what my actual quest is.

    “My quest is not people’s opinions. My quest is my job. My quest is making sure that when someone watches something that I have done, it moves them or they enjoy it. My personal life, who I am, all of that is not my job,” she said.

    The actor also spoke about the perils of social media where speculation was rife last month that all was not well in her marriage after she dropped Jonas from her surname on Twitter.

    Chopra Jonas termed this as a “professional hazard” as believes that there is unnecessary credence given to social media in real life.

    “It’s a very vulnerable feeling, actually, that if I post a picture, everything that’s behind me in that picture is going to be zoomed in on, and people are going to speculate,” Chopra Jonas said.

    “It’s just a professional hazard…. Because of the noise of social media, because of the prevalence that it has in our lives, I think it seems a lot larger than it is. I think that we give it a lot more credence in real life, and I don’t think it needs that,”” she added.

    On the work front, the actor was last seen on the big screen in the Hollywood film “The Matrix Resurrections”, which opened in cinemas worldwide in December.

    Her upcoming slate of films includes Jim Strouse-directed rom-com “Text For You”, Amazon thriller series “Citadel”, produced by Russo Brothers, and “Sangeet”, an unscripted series co-produced with her husband.

    She will also produce a film with Amazon Studios on the life of Ma Anand Sheela, the former aide to late godman Osho Rajneesh.

  • James Bond actress Naomie Harris says a ‘huge star’ groped her during audition

    By IANS

    The Oscar-nominated actor Naomie Harris has said a #MeToo incident on one of her recent projects prompted the “immediate” removal of the perpetrator, as she recalled another occasion when she was groped by a “huge star” who faced no censure.

    Harris, who played Moneypenny in the last three Bond films and was up for an Oscar for her role in Moonlight in 2017, declined to name either of the men allegedly responsible.

    In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, she recalled an incident she has previously discussed in which “a huge, huge star” put his hand up her skirt during an audition.

    “What was so shocking about it was the casting director was there and the director, and of course no one said anything because he was – he is – such a huge star. That was my only #MeToo incident, so I felt very lucky given how rife that behaviour was.

    “Now things have definitely changed: I was on a project where there was a #MeToo incident and there was no hesitation – [the perpetrator] was immediately removed,” she said.

    Harris’s comments came as Claire Foy, who starred in the Netflix drama The Crown, discussed violence against women as she promoted her latest project, A Very British Scandal. She plays the Duchess of Argyll, who was shamed in the 1960s after being secretly photographed giving oral sex to a man who was not her husband. A judge in her divorce case dismissed the duchess as “a completely promiscuous woman”.

    In an interview with the Sunday Times, Foy said: “Sex is the one thing you can get a woman on. It is a quick way to make a woman subhuman, wrong and weird. It happens in every walk of life.”

    Foy spoke forcefully about how women are often given the responsibility for their own safety, such as what to wear, or what hand signal to give if they are in danger, rather than the onus being on making men less violent.

    “Hundreds of women get attacked every single day,” she said. “It makes me so angry. How you can look into making women safe and think about getting more policemen – who women don’t trust – to look after them? We don’t need looking after. We don’t. We need people to stop killing and raping us. That’s all. It’s simple. And it’s awful to say, but that’s men. It’s time to say: ‘You sort that out. What are you going to do?’”

    She added: “It’s like saying that lots of dogs are killing cats, so let’s lock cats up and let dogs loose. It doesn’t make any sense. Women basically just get lumped with the emotional burden and responsibility of everything.”