Sunny Leone Says She Faced 'Death Threats, Bomb Threats' Before Doing 'Bigg Boss'

Actress Sunny Leone, who walked the red carpet of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival on Thursday for the international premiere of her film Kennedy, spoke about facing difficulties and animosity as she was moving from the adult entertainment industry to Bollywood. 

Speaking to Deadline, she said, "I was in the adult entertainment industry, and Big Brother India, which is called Bigg Boss, called and said, ‘We want you to be on the show’. And I told my boyfriend, now my husband, ‘You’re out of your mind, I don’t want to go to India, they’ll hate me’. Because I’ve already gone through so much hate within that community, at that moment, I was like, ‘No way, you’re out of your mind, I’m not doing that’.”

Bigg Boss, according to Sunny, was "very persistent" and even sent her a PowerPoint showing their audience. She claimed that after being persuaded, she consented to participate in the show. However, things didn't go as planned. She further continued, "Right before getting on the show, there were a lot of hurdles. There were death threats, bomb threats. The CEO of Viacom, I believe, he had to quit because of this pressure and someone else came in. He said, ‘Well, you’ve already signed her to be on the show, let’s bring her in’."

Sunny continued, "What people related to was that I was human, and not jumping on tables and doing all sorts of crazy stuff. They related with me the person, who was cooking in the kitchen, cleaning… People connected with that girl on Bigg Boss, and disconnected with Sunny Leone from the adult entertainment industry. I’m not talking about the industry, I’m talking about an individual who doesn’t know my background, and then found out my background. In that way, I had many, many people supporting me. Then the first movie was there, and there were a lot of not so nice articles, and a lot of hate, and a lot of hurdles and hate between all that as well.”

Her new film Kennedy is a crime drama where the actress will be portraying the role of Charlie, a woman who is caught in two different worlds- the world that she wants to be in and the one she gets trapped into. The film would mark Anurag Kashyap's first narrative feature to be officially selected at Cannes as well as for a fact that Sunny will be representing India on an international platform, leaving an indelible mark in the hearts of audiences worldwide.