Nora Fatehi shares her appalling experiences of casting couch and bullying in Bollywood industry

Setting foot in the Bollywood industry is like finding a treasure in the ocean. Millions try and millions fail on a daily basis. Among the same competition, Nora Fatehi struggled hard for five years to make her mark but it was not until last year that things stated looking promising for her. 

Although she had earlier participated in the most watched TV reality show Bigg Boss and was seen in a song in magnum opus Baahubali, yet she was hardly praised for her work. But last year we saw her raising temperatures with her sensuous dance in the remake of Dilbar and my oh my!! she was there on the charts, sky rocketing to success every minute of the day. 

After the smashing success of Dilbar, Nora started getting recognition as a dancer and now after O Saki Saki's remake, she has become the new goddess of dance in our tinsel town. In a recent interaction with a leading entertainment portal, Nora got a chance to share her struggles, her battle through bullying, casting agents, cheating agencies and insecure roommates.

Recalling it all she said,"I had to share an apartment with 8 girls. I walked in to this apartment, I was shocked and I was freaking out. My roommates stole my passport, I had to leave India and go back to Canada for a while," she adds. Nora also spoke about getting bullied because of her language barrier and her nationality. "I started learning Hindi but the auditions were very traumatic for me. I wasn't really mentally prepared and I made a fool of myself. People were really unforgiving. They wouldn't just be mean, they would laugh in front of my face as if I'm some circus. They would bully me. It was humiliating. I used to cry while travelling back to my home. There was this one casting agent who once told me, 'We don't need you here. Go back'. I'll never forget that."

She further added,"Life for foreigners in India is very difficult. We go through a lot and people don't even know. They take our money. It's happened to me. I remember my first agency who got me here from Canada. They were really aggressive in terms of behaviour and I didn't feel like I was guided the right way. So I wanted to leave them and in order to do that, they told me ' we are not going to give you your money' And I lost 20 lakhs at that time, which I had made from my ad campaigns. But I thought sacrificing it would be for a bigger picture."