The 'Isn't It Romantic' actress 'sincerely' apologizes for taking part in a series of advertisements for the skin-lightening product as she calls it one of the biggest 'missteps' in her career.

• Feb 11, 2021

AceShowbiz - Priyanka Chopra is owning up to her past mistake. In her upcoming memoir "Unfinished", the Indian-born actress addressed one of the biggest blunder in her career, which is starring in a series of advertisements for skin-lightening cream.

The "Baywatch" star expressed her regret for taking part in the adverts for Pond's Garnier cream, saying, "I can't go back and change what I did, but I can apologize, and I do so sincerely." Calling the campaigns one of her "most profound regrets," the 38-year-old said it was one of the biggest "missteps" in her career she wishes she hadn't taken.

In one of the Pond's Garnier cream ads airing in her country, Priyanka appears as a dark-skinned woman who loses her man to a lighter-skinned woman. After she starts to use the cream, her skin whitens and she wins her man back.

The clips resurfaced on social media in 2020, as critics branded Priyanka a hypocrite for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement while endorsing a product which perpetuates colorism. Speaking to The Guardian about how she felt after watching the ad, the wife of Nick Jonas admitted, "I felt sad, actually. I saw myself through my 13-year-old eyes when I was making concoctions in my bathroom trying to lighten my skin tone."

Priyanka has previously expressed her regret for endorsing the product, though admitting that she grew up believing that "dark skin was not pretty." She said in an interview with Marie Claire earlier this year, "[Skin lightening] was so normalized in South Asia; it's such a large industry that everyone was doing it. In fact, doing it is still a check [mark] when you are a female actor, but it's awful. And it was awful for me, for a little girl who used to put talcum-powder cream on my face because I believed that dark skin was not pretty."

Having embraced her body regardless her skin color now, the winner of Miss World 2000 said in an old interview which reemerged last year, "I am very proud to be dusky myself. I would never go round saying you need to become fair and that's the only way you'll be beautiful, because I don't endorse that."