On Nora Fatehi's birthday, we look back at the time when she got candid about her struggling days in Mumbai. She was told to go back to her country by a casting director.
Actor, dancer and singer Nora Fatehi has come a long way since she made her debut in showbiz with the 2014 Hindi film Roar: Tigers of the Sunderbans. She has featured in dance tracks for popular films like Temper, Baahubali: The Beginning, Kick 2, Stree and Satyameva Jayate among more. Besides this, she has also dabbled in television, and has appeared in Bigg Boss Season 9 and Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa as a participant.
However, Nora’s road to success was not a smooth one. In a 2019 interview with Pinkvilla, Nora candidly spoke about her struggles and her rough audition period in Mumbai.
Stating that people were unforgiving and bullied her, the actor said, “Auditions were really traumatic because I was just learning Hindi, and I would make a fool out of myself. People were unforgiving, they would laugh in my face. I would sit in the rickshaw and I would be howling, and the driver would be like ‘are you okay?’ I remember one casting director, she just ripped me apart. She told me ‘why are you even here?’ And I was like ‘Because I wanna make it, you know. I have a dream. I want to be a performer, I want to entertain people.'”
Nora went on to add that she was even told to go back where she came from. For those who don’t know, Nora is of Moroccan descent, and grew up in Canada.
“She (the aforecited casting director) said, ‘No, no, no, go back to your country. We already have people like you, go back.’ And it hurt me, because we, and by we I mean the Moroccan people, we grew up watching Hindi cinema. We idolise it. Arab people are crazy about Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh bhachan, kajol, Madhuri Dixit ma’am — they are obsessed with them,” Nora said.
But as they say, all is well that ends well, and for quite a while now, Nora’s star has definitely been on the rise. She was last seen in Ayushmann Khurrana’s An Action Hero. Besides this, Nora also recently featured in a B Praak music video titled Achha Sila Diya alongside actor Rajkummar Rao.
Nora Fatehi turns emotional as she recalls traumatic days as struggler in Bollywood, meeting 'evil people
Actor Nora Fatehi has said that she arrived in India with dreams of stardom, but her bubble burst quite quickly. Nora grew up in 'the hood' in Canada, and after dropping out of university because of falling grades, decided that she wanted to pursue her true calling: becoming an entertainer.
Nora, in a new interview, emotionally recalled her initial days in India, and said that it pains her to think about all the other aspiring entertainers who've given up on their dreams because of the 'vicious' world.
She said in an appearance on YouTuber Bukhash's show, "We were so excited and so naive. When I reached India, it was nothing like (what I had imagined). I was thinking I'll get picked up by a limousine and a butler, and they're going to take me to a suite, and I would go to my auditions in that limo. It was nothing like that. I had the biggest slap in my face. The bullying, the rejection, the traumatic experience that I went through."
She continued, "If someone had told me that these are all the things I was going to go through -- 'You're going to meet evil people, they're going to steal your passport, you're going to get deported, you're going to go back to Canada and people are going to laugh at you. How do you go from a developed country to a developing country? You're going to go back to India, you're going to fight, learn the language, and you're going to meet people who're going to laugh at you on the way, they're going to laugh in your face'."
Nora said that she would be called in for auditions by casting directors who knew she was not Indian, and give her lines in Hindi, only to laugh at her. "They would start laughing together, high-fiving each other," she said, thinking to herself, "How f****g dare you, wait till I leave. Don't do it in front of my face." Nora said that she would counter with a 'dirty attitude', which made them recoil.
Nora shared snippets from the interview on Instagram, calling it "One of my most vulnerable, real and honest interviews ever." She said that has been overwhelmed by the positive messages that she received since the interview went live, and thanked her fans for writing to her.
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