Actor who is riding high on the success of her Telugu debut Lenin, reminisced about being bullied as a child after her family relocated to Nigeria, revealing that it was the cruelty of other Indian kids that eventually pushed her to master English.
During an interaction with college students in Honest Town Hall, Bhagyashri was asked by a student how she dealt with bullying, particularly around accents and confidence. “I grew up in a Marathi-medium school in my hometown of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and only spoke Marathi and Hindi. When my father got a job opportunity in Nigeria, we moved abroad. But the transition was brutal.” She recounted.
“I didn’t know English at all then. Only knew Marathi, only knew Hindi, and all these NRI kids who are Indian kids around me were like, how does she not know English? So obviously, the bullying started,” Bhagyashri said. “I was very innocent. It was just because I didn’t know the language.”
She said the experience was not unique to her and that most children face some form of bullying while growing up. “All of us as kids go through these difficulties. We all face some kind of bullying, whether it’s for our looks, the way we talk, not knowing the language, or not being good at studies. There are so many reasons,” she said.
But rather than letting the experience define her negatively, Bhagyashri said she chose to see the bullying as the reason she improved. “I’ve been through bullying. I feel it’s all about tuning out the noise and focusing on what our goal is. It will be tough, it will hurt, but that pain will push you to grow,” she said. “Honestly, without that, my English wouldn’t be this good. If they hadn’t bullied me because of my English, right? So I choose to see it that way. I believe every negative thing in our life helps make the positive even stronger.”
Bhagyashri, who comes from a lower middle-class family and has spoken openly about watching her father struggle for employment, has gone from a Marathi-medium school in Maharashtra to a Cadbury advertisement to starring opposite Akhil Akkineni in one of the biggest Telugu hits of the year.
Directed by Murali Kishor Abburu, Lenin is a rural action drama set in the Rayalaseema region, starring Akhil Akkineni as a village strongman caught in a cycle of violence. Bhagyashri plays Bharati, love interest of the protagonist.
The film crossed Rs 25 crore India net in its opening weekend and has given both Akhil and Bhagyashri their biggest commercial success. For Bhagyashri, after cameo appearances in Hindi films Yaariyan 2 and Chandu Champion, she made her Telugu debut opposite Ravi Teja in Harish Shankar’s Mr. Bachchan in 2024. She acted in Kingdom alongside Vijay Deverakonda, her Tamil debut Kaantha with Dulquer Salmaan, and Andhra King Taluka opposite Ram Pothineni, and all of them underperformed commercially. Despite the four consecutive disappointments, Bhagyashree has gone from strength to strength in her career.