Oscar winner Jared Leto has been hosting regular Instagram lives during lockdown where he wears eccentric outfits selling merchandise to raise funds for charity. In each of these several hour-long sessions, he plays music and connects with a few audience members on video, which is the closest thing to face-to-face interaction during social distancing. On April 12, actor Sabila Nur joined one such IG live with no knowledge of how that would inspire an array of uncalled for criticism.
People took offence at Sabila asking the Suicide Squad actor whether he had heard about Bangladesh, stating that many think it’s a part of India. It wasn’t entirely daft of her to ask that, as she had to repeat where she’s from after Leto didn’t catch it the first time. It’s safe to assume that those attempting to drag her through the mud for this don’t know how many Americans have little to no idea about Bangladesh.
Leto did a commendable job of ad-libbing with a visibly star-struck Sabila. She also left enough bread crumbs for him to carry on the charming small talk. She even corrected him when he mistook Bangladesh for a giant country, although Leto still insisted it’s “bigger than Burma.”
Some news portals and social media sites shared the instantly viral clip with hundreds and thousands of views and shares. The comment sections were aimed at analyzing how Sabila suffers from inferiority complex about her motherland, lacks self-respect, can’t pronounce Bangladesh, yada yada yada. Ironically, Leto himself runs a website called Bystander Revolution dedicated to stopping such cyber-bullying.
Would this be the case if the actor was male? Doubtful. Most popular female actors in Bangladesh are victims of cyber bullying, unlike their male counterparts. One only has to spend a few minutes visiting their social media pages or their private accounts to assess the truth of this statement. So, while we snigger at how much Leto taught Sabila about Bangladesh, he essentially taught everyone else something more sinister about how we treat our celebrities.
