Priyanka Chopra shared this image. (courtesy: priyankachopra)
Superstar Priyanka Chopra has been social media's favourite topic of discussion ever since she sat down for a chat with American actor-director Dax Shepard on his podcast the Armchair Expert. The podcast covered Priyanka Chopra's professional and personal spheres and had the actress talk about her journey in Bollywood as well as Hollywood. During the conversation, Priyanka Chopra speaks about the evolution of the Hindi film industry. She said, “Bollywood has evolved in such an incredible way. You have the mainstream big action and the love story and the dancing…” To this, Dax interrupts her by saying, “RRR…”, referring to the SS Rajamouli's magnum opus which won an Oscar in addition to becoming a global theatrical success. However, Priyanka corrects and clarifies that it is not a Hindi film. So far so good. But in correcting him Priyanka makes a mistake herself and says that RRR is a Tamil film, when it is a Telugu movie. She says, “That's a Tamil movie by the way…It's like big, mega, blockbuster Tamil which does all of those… It's like our Avengers.”
Needless to say, the gaffe caught the attention of the Internet and soon enough, memes and jokes followed. For instance, one user wrote, “Wow. PC has officially ended Tamil vs Telugu fan rivalry. Now please call Ponniyin Selvan a Telugu film and we're done. No more wars.”
Many were disappointed with Priyanka Chopra's mistake given that she even hosted the team of RRR in Los Angeles in connection with the Oscars. One tweet said, “The way she corrected Dax so confidently like "that's a Tamil movie btw, that's a big mega blockbuster Tamil movie". you literally met RRR team during LA promos ahead of Oscars, hosted Charan and fam at your residence.”
Some even described it as ignorance about the individual southern states and the assumption that all of south India is Madras.
“Without knowing the original language of the #RRRMovie Priyanka Chopra participated in the campaign of Oscars,” another user pointed out.
One tweet read, “2 wrongs do not make a right,” with laughter emojis.
“She was dead serious too,” joked another.
RRR is a fictional take on the revolutionary freedom fighters Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan) and Komaram Bheem (Jr NTR), and their fight against the British. The film won the Oscar award in the Best Original Song category for the track Naatu Naatu.
As mentioned above, when the team of RRR was in LA to attend the 95th Academy Awards, Priyanka Chopra attended a special screening of the film and even hosted director SS Rajamouli, Ram Charan and their families.
Interestingly, Priyanka Chopra made her acting debut in the Tamil film Thamizhan in 2002. The actress will be seen next in the thriller web series Citadel.