Priyanka Chopra, Why Did You Do It?

Dear Priyanka Chopra

I’ve known you from the time you  came into films. Eager, ambitious, affable and that throaty laughter followed you into stardom. When you decided to go global I knew you had a game-plan. But I didn’t know the game-plan was  THIS????!!! I mean Babe ,watch.Watch your steps.

What are you playing in Baywatch?A bad girl?  You played one much more effectively at the beginning of  your Bollywood career  inAetraaz. A  female Ajit, the Loin Of Bollywood in a short tight dress? For Chrissake.You were in  every frame of  your last Hindi film. InBaywatch if I stepped out for  a popcorn I’d have missed half of your screen  presence.If I also decided to  go to the loo I’d probably think I was conned into believing you are in Baywatch.

Audiences expected more, much more. They are very disappointed, more so since your international television debut in Quantico features you in  a central part. Here in Baywatch  you are just the token bad-guy with a sex change, dealing in drugs, getting the naysayers killed, swearing like  a sailor and showing cleavage because…well, that’s what female  villains do. They wear revealing clothes, swear, smoke and have sex. You don’t do the lust. Thank God for small mercies.

Your Victoria Leeds is not even a lead. I am afraid they conned you into believing you’ve the main antagonist’s role. Baywatch doesn’t need a villain. It is about heroes and their run-in with sharks, mid-ocean explosions and drowning swimmers. In the middle of all this frenzy you keep popping in like a drunken motorist who has lost her way in a traffic snarl.

The  performances, the clothes, accent and body language are all wrong. This is not what we expected. This is  not what you promised. You owe us  a second chance. Please choose your second international film not because it’s  got big stars in it but because you will make India proud by your association with the outside world.

It’s  very simple, really. Would you have accepted the role inBaywatch if it was offered to you in Bollywood ?

Think.