By: Entertainment DeskMumbai | January 16, 2026 04:44 PM IST 3 min readPriyanka Chopra struggled in Hollywood after leaving an established Bollywood career. Her manager has now recalled heartbreaking details. (Photo: Reuters)Sometime in 2015, Priyanka Chopra took a massive leap in her career, setting her sights on Hollywood and deciding to chart new territory. She signed a talent-holding deal with ABC Studios and was later cast in the American thriller series Quantico as the character Alex Parrish. The series premiered in 2015 on ABC, making Priyanka Chopra the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series, creating waves on a global scale. However, her manager Anjula Acharia has revealed that the idea was initially met with skepticism, with many calling her “crazy” for trying to introduce a “brown Bollywood star in America.” Recently, Anjula appeared on an episode of The Ok Sweetie Show and reflected on the early doubts:“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.’”In the same conversation, Acharia also shared the early, challenging days of Priyanka in Hollywood, when she had to navigate the industry by meeting several “assistant of the assistant,” a process she described as heartbreaking. “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.”Also Read | ‘Ikkis and Dhurandhar should co-exist in a democracy’: Ikkis writers on facing trolls, working with DharmendraAcharia further reflected on how working with Priyanka has taught her humility. “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.’”On the work front, Priyanka Chopra will soon be seen in the R-rated pirate adventure The Bluff as Bloody Mary, alongside co-star Karl Urban. The film is set to debut on Prime Video on February 25. She is also making her comeback to Indian cinema with S.S. Rajamouli’s globe trotter, Varanasi, which is led by Mahesh Babu and Prithviraj Sukumaran.Click for more updates and latest Hollywood News along with Bollywood and Entertainment updates. Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the World at The Indian Express.© IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:Priyanka Chopra