Bollywood’s leading performer, with chartbuster songs like ‘Dilbar’, ‘Kamariya’, ‘O Saki’, ‘Kusu Kusu’, and ‘Manike’ among several others, revealed she was exploited at the start of her career and wasn’t even paid any money for some of these trending numbers, despite being hand to mouth.
Nora Fatehi, who had been struggling in India since 2014, before getting her first big hit ‘Dilbar’ in 2018, followed by ‘Kamariya’ in the same year, revealed in a new interview that she was about to leave the country when these opportunities happened. But despite not being paid for them, she agreed to do it, to prove herself and earn a name in the industry.
“When I met the creators of these two songs… which I never got paid for, by the way, I did them for free,” she shared. “And I did them for free because I said that it’s not the time for me to make money, right now is the time for me to prove myself and to make a name, and to work with credible people.”
Notably, ‘Stree’ was made by Dinesh Vijan’s Maddock Films, while ‘Satyameva Jayate’ was backed by T-Series, and starred celebrated actors John Abraham and Manoj Bajpayee.
“All these things made more sense than to make money at that time, even though, trust me, I needed it. I needed money, but I was like, ‘It’s okay, let’s prioritize this first’,” Fatehi recalled.
The ‘Bigg Boss’ alum also mentioned that she was struggling to pay her house rent right before shooting for these songs and even had no money to eat anything. “I went through a phase where I was so skinny and borderline anorexic because I didn’t have money to eat much,” she divulged, blaming a modeling agency for financial ‘exploitation’ of ‘foreign models’ like her.
Nora Fatehi issues an apology
On the work front, Nora Fatehi is awaiting the release of her debut Telugu film ‘Matka’, starring Varun Tej and Meenakshi Chaudhary.
She was last seen in actor Kunal Khemu’s directorial debut, ‘Madgaon Express’.
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