Anna Gurji (2Nick Stern/WEN)
The young actress who portrays Mohammed’s child bride in the infamous film that set the Islamic world ablaze says she was duped into accepting the role and is now terrified of retribution.
“I am so destroyed right now, assaulted with countless threatening messages on my [e-mail] mailbox from incognito user names,’’ doe-eyed actress Anna Gurji, 21, told The Post yesterday
In a lengthy post on Facebook, the actress insisted she and other actors in “Innocence of Muslims” were tricked by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt, into believing they were making an inoffensive swords-and-sandals B-movie called “Desert Warrior.”
She said she never could have guessed the film was a parody on Islam that portrayed Mohammed as a violent, sex-crazed sadist.
The LA-made film has sparked riots throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including one in which US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
“My character, Hilary, was a young girl who is sold (against her own free will) by her parents to a tribe leader known as GEORGE,’’ Gurji wrote in the posting.
“There was no mention EVER by anyone of MUHAMMAD and no mention of religion during the entire time I was on the set.
“The film was about a comet falling into a desert and different tribes in ancient Egypt fighting to acquire it . . . The character GEORGE was a [tribe] leader.
“People ask what’s my reaction after seeing [the video]. Shock,’’ she wrote. “Two hours after I found out everything that happened, I . . . could not stop crying.”
Still, she vowed, “I will not go into hiding when I have nothing to hide.’’ She added, “It’s painful to see how our faces were used to create something so atrocious without us knowing anything about it at all.’’
Gurji, who Britain’s Daily Mail said is Catholic, described how she knows what it’s like to live amid strife. She grew up in Georgia in the former Soviet Union.
She admitted that after moving to the US and having little luck as an actress, she was desperate for roles — but not like this one. She added she and her dad just wrote a script “about world peace.’’
An hour after posting her letter, it appeared that she had forgotten something — and added that she wanted to apologize “to all the Muslims that are offended.’’
Nakoula — who has been in hiding since meeting with federal authorities over possible parole violations for posting the 14-minute movie trailer on YouTube — has been linked to a controversial anti-Islamic preacher in Southern California, Zakaria Botros.