Priyanka Chopra Jonas has achieved much success in both Bollywood and Hollywood. However, Chopra has also been subjected to some harsh situations, including one that highlights the darker side of working in the industry as a woman. In an interview for The Zoe Report, she discussed a particularly “dehumanizing” request from the early days of her career where the director demanded the actress flash her underpants for the film.

“This may have been 2002 or ’03,” Chopra stated. She was cast to play an undercover character whose task was to seduce a man by stripping one article of clothing at a time. According to Deadline, Chopra was not fully comfortable with this scene and had requested to wear extra layers of clothing to accommodate her discomfort. However, the unnamed director remained persistent in his original vision and insisted that the actress’s underwear be on film.

“The filmmaker was like, ‘No, I need to see her underwear. Otherwise, why is anybody coming to watch this movie?’ It was such a dehumanizing moment. It was a feeling of, ‘I’m nothing else outside of how I can be used, my art is not important, what I contribute is not important.”

Chopra ended up walking from the set and quitting the project altogether, being so off-put by the director’s presence that she just “couldn’t look at (the director) every day.” However, she still paid the production team any expenses related to her appearance.