After being crowned #MissWorldin2000, #PriyankaChopra entered the entertainment world. Having debuted with a Tamil film, ‘#Thamizhan’, she entered #Bollywood with ‘#TheHeroLoveStoryOfASpy’ which had #SunnyDeol and #PreityZinta playing lead roles. Then came ‘#Andaaz’ and ‘#MujhseShaadiKarogi’ where she played a leading lady and both were superhit movies. Her grey shade role in ‘#Aitraaz’, starring #AkshayKumar and #KareenaKapoor, won her accolades but she already had decided to not to do vampish characters. Priyanka had established herself well in the film industry and was getting parts in major production houses’ big films. Later she co-starred with #HrithikRoshan in ‘#Krrish’ and #ShahrukhKhan in ‘#Don’. ‘#Fashion’ fetched her a #NationalFilmAward and also a Filmfare Award for Best Actress. Her repertoire includes successful films like #Kaminey, #7KhoonMaaf, #MaryKom, #BajiraoMastani among others.
Priyanka Chopra is a go getter and always excels in whatever she does. She is a perfectionist and an entrepreneur too. Priyanka floated her own production house, Purple Pebble Pictures, along with her mother Dr Madhu Chopra, and has been producing films across Indian languages. Her first film as a producer, Ventilator, won three National Awards, viz, Best Direction, Best Editing and Best Audiography. Winner of two National Film Awards and five Filmfare Awards, Priyanka definitely is an achiever and her name has featured in the list of 100 Most Influential People in the World, 100 Most Powerful Women and BBC 100 Women.
Recently Priyanka made a statement in media that some forces in the Bollywood were working against her and she took a decision to move to the west. Initially she focused on singing and released three singles. But the actor in her was not letting her be away from the cameras. Priyanka did a web series Quantico in Hollywood and had made up her mind to stay back in Hollywood. Later she was part of Baywatch, Isn’t It Romantic, The Matrix Resurrections etc. Priyanka found a life partner in American singer-songwriter Nick Jonas and they got married in 2018. They have a daughter named Malti Marie Chopra Jonas. Now in Citadel Priyanka is headlining the show wherein she plays a spy alongside Richard Madden. Our Sr Editor Keerti Kadam interacted with Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Excerpts…
Conversations are happening about diversity and more prominent representations of Indians and South Asians in Hollywood. Do you think the scope for us Indians to headline a project in Hollywood, be it a film or a web show has gotten better? Did it require for you to audition for Citadel?
I didn’t audition for Citadel. I had to audition for my first one Quantico, and I feel auditioning is not a bad thing. Auditioning is normal, in fact, we should do a lot more of it because then people are cast because of merit. They are not cast because they are a flavour of the season or someone likes you, or for that matter someone recommended you. But I do think when we talk about representation in Hollywood, English language entertainment especially, why not? We are one fifth of the world’s population, just Indians! English language entertainment travels all around the world. Why don’t we see more of us as leads? We come from one of the largest film industries in the world. We produce more than a 1000 movies per annum in India, every year. Our technicians are world class. Our technicians are hired by Hollywood to do a lot of their work. Why? Because they are good at their jobs. But yet we are sidelined. So I am sorry but an actor like me who has enjoyed being a leading lady in Bollywood, I know my job will not be sidelined. When I audition I will be good because I am a good actor. I will get the job like I did for Quantico and I am not under confident so we need to create more opportunities and I know as someone who has gone from India to abroad. I myself as a producer am doing that, I have a first look deal with Amazon Prime.
I am developing multiple shows with them which not only star Indian faces but also have Indian faces behind the camera, women behind the camera, writers, directors. My dream is to be able to influx Hollywood with brown faces because I know how talented we are and how much we deserve to be on the world stage. So it wasn’t easy as it has taken world’s 10 years to be able to be the face of a poster and have equal opportunity with my male co-actor. It will take time but I am not scared of it. I am very hopeful that in the next 5 years you will see a very changing landscape because of lot of my colleagues and our demands of making sure we see a lot more of faces that look like ours.
The action that you have done is fantastic in fact Russo Brothers said that it’s on par with James Bond movies. What are your views on that?
I have come from a background of doing action films. I have done action movies in Bollywood as well, so I have a lot of confidence in myself when I am going to do it with my amazing stunt team. The stunt team for Citadel comes from the Russo Brothers. They have done movies like Avengers, James Bond movies, they have worked with the best in business so I have learnt a lot from them. I am not arrogant. I love to learn and especially when someone is more experienced than I am, then I try to learn more from them. So I had a very good experience of working with the stunt team. They taught me a lot. Almost 80% of the action I did myself because I trust my body and my instincts, but I have learnt a lot of things. You know the action that I have done in this show is definitely very different than anything else I have done before.
You said a very important thing about representation and how this is one of the biggest shows in the world, headlined by a brown woman from South Asia. What do you think this means going ahead, not just for you but for the leading ladies from South Asia who have struggled like you? Where do you think this goes? How Important is Citadel in mainstreaming representation in Hollywood and what does it mean for your career as well as going forward?
I wouldn’t like to say Citadel just by itself, if it does well it’s going to change the game for the actresses who come from South Asia. That doesn’t work, it’s fine. But seeing someone say like me for the first time in Quantico, everyone was so excited to see it. Why? Because we’ve never seen it. That opened the doors for Hollywood and International entertainment. Everyone was like, Oh! This can happen. You know we should look at more talent from India, not just females though. Before me, Mindy Kaling or Aziz Ansari or people of Indian descent have created their own shows. They both had to create their own shows to play leads, because no one else was offering it. Think about how lesser opportunities were then. We had Aishwarya Rai who did some amazing movies, we have Deepika Padukone doing amazing work, we have seen Irrfan who has done good work. So one thing can not lead to change, but it’s the collective of us continuously bonding together, standing together and saying,”You know that I have gotten this opportunity, now it’s my responsibility to create opportunity for someone else, turn around and move somebody else forward”. Atleast that’s what I am doing because it gives me so much joy to do things that was not done for me. I recently had this South Asian pre-Oscars party that I did last year and then this year and I am going to do it next year again and every year I am going to make it bigger and include more and more South Asian people because I want to show the power of the collective, the power of all of us.
When you sit in Hollywood you see and say, Oh wait I know this one actor, then there is Sarita Choudhary who has worked for a long time, you name a few actors and filmmakers, but when you see all of us in a room together and you see 400+ South Asian talent in the room together dressed in Indian finery at Paramount Studios, are you kidding me? That’s Powerful! That’s what I mean it takes demand to create change so I don’t know if Citadel will be the catalyst to create that change but I know Citadel will be one of the many other things or a few other things that will lead to the change. Hopefully the next generation of Indian actors will not have to think about these problems. They can just audition, win a role without having to worry about it. That’s my dream.
Your debut movie was in Tamil and we saw that a regional language movie like RRR made it to the Oscars. Now that you are a global actor, would you like to act in a regional language movie?
I would love to! I actually have a tremendous admiration for regional cinema. When I spoke to Rajamouli sir, I expressed how incredible it was that he created such a beautiful, original world for people across the globe to enjoy. I think the Tamil Industry gave me my start and I think that I have a lot of friends in Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil industry. If I get an opportunity to do something which is really amazing, path breaking, of course I will! I’ll need a little help with the language because I don’t understand any other language besides Hindi and English, but I can pretend very well. (Laugh) Like in Citadel, I speak 5 languages, I don’t really know, but I can act like I do. So hopefully just like I did with my first Tamil movie, I memorised my lines and I delivered it. I would love to get an opportunity to work in any kind of Cinema. I think language is of no barrier to me. I am an actor, I can learn how to do things and I would love the opportunity.
Were you skeptical about doing stunts as there’s someone back home waiting for you?
So just for clarity, I am not an irresponsible person when it comes to doing stunts and I never have been. I don’t do stunts because I think I am the best person in the room to do it. There are experts, we have stunt doubles, we have stunt team and when anything is really really hard, I leave it to the experts because it’s their job. I am just an actor. You should leave it to the stunts team because that’s what they actually do, day and night, it’s their department. So when something is super dangerous, I have never been someone who has been unrealistic about you know, just for the thrill I will do it. I don’t need such thrills. I don’t want to put the poor producers in quandary by stopping the shoot of the movie because if the actor gets hurt producer is the most affected person. When I was a kid, I used to be interested in such things. When I was younger and did movies, I have hung outside helicopters without a rake but as you grow older you kind of realise how silly that was and you should leave that department to the experts. So I do that. As for the challenges in doing stunts, I think the challenge is to make it look convincing, basically how to portray it convincingly.
There was a time when actresses like Hema Malini, Madhuri Dixit were considered as role models and nowadays every actress wants to become Priyanka Chopra. What is your take on it?
I grew up wanting to be Madhuri Dixit and Sridevi. They were my idols. Rekha ma’am, another one of my idols. But I think each generation evolves. It’s natural and I am sure their idols must have been the actresses before them. When the new generation steps in, the old generation takes a step back. I still admire these ladies and they were superstars at such a time where women were not given such big opportunities. We are doing it now because, us girls collectively state that we don’t want side roles, we want the main role and if you are not going to cast us, we will make our own films. But back in the time, when Sridevi, Madhuri dixit and Rekha ji were superstars they had to struggle so much. But because they had to struggle so much, they paved the way for today’s generation and hopefully now that we are demanding things, the next generation won’t have to face the problem that we are facing today. They will definitely have their own problems at that time but not the problems that this generation is facing today, because we will solve it for them.
After Malti came into your life, your priority might have changed. Did it have an effect on your assignments and how?
My work hours have reduced, they have changed. If I get a break, I go back home. I don’t work everyday like for example during the weekends, I don’t work. I enjoy spending time at home. My priorities have changed. I have slowed down things. I took a year off, after completing Citadel and of course for Malti as well to spend more time with her, to take care of her and bond with each other as a family. She is at such a healthy age where we can travel to different places together. We travelled to India, where Malti was sitting at my mom’s house eating cottage cheese with both her tiny hands. But yes priorities change, and I have seen myself controlling my stuff accordingly. My work is not my whole life. Actually things changed even before Malti came. For the past 4-5 years, the speed at which I used to RUN has now decreased, because when you get a solid ground you don’t have to run here and there. I am glad that I have a strong foundation now.
You have accomplished so much and are headlining a show like Citadel. What is that one personal and professional goal that you are yet to achieve?
A professional goal that I want to achieve is that, I want to be able to create a filmography that has the variety that I had when I was working in Bollywood. Every film that I did in Bollywood, I played a different kind of character, I did many different genres of work. I haven’t done that in Hollywood, yet. I have just about started my journey and I am hoping in the next decade or so, I can have a rainbow of various roles, challenging roles, work with the best filmmakers in Hollywood and in Bollywood, to be able to do amazing movies with the best of the best in both the industries. Very few actors, even if you think internationally have that opportunity to be able to ride between two countries like Sophia Loren, Salma Hayek, Me, Aishwarya Rai, Deepika Padukone and now hopefully Alia Bhatt. There are very few that navigate being relevant in more than one industry, so it’s a very unique opportunity and I will never want to lose it. I think that’s one goal that I want to achieve professionally. Personally, I think I am very content with my goals. I am in a very content place in my life right now. God has really blessed me. My father’s blessings are with me. My family is healthy and happy, we live in harmony, what else do you want? So when it comes to personal goals I am good.
What is the secret of your success?
There are a few, I don’t think there’s only one thing that makes someone successful. I believe in perseverance and that nothing can speak more than hard work. A lot of people don’t get opportunities. Recognising opportunities is very important. When there is a door that cracks open, and you just think that it’s only open for the light to come in, then it’s a missed opportunity. But if the door cracks open and you have the perseverance and curiosity to open it a little bit more you may get lucky. We females can have an incredible family life and an incredible career. I have seen my grandmother and mother do it, I have seen many women in my family do it. But women need opportunities and I think recognising an opportunity is not just for women but for young people is crucial instead of waiting for the opportunities. No one will spoon-feed it to you. It’s not going to come in your hand and will say, “Hey, I want to cast you in my movie!” This only happens in reel life, not in real life. In real life you have to persevere, you have to work hard, you have to hustle and you will bear the fruit.
With Citadel you recently revealed that you got equal pay for the first time in 22 years. Do you think insecurity of the other gender exists in 2023?
Definitely! I am sorry to the men in the room but I have some incredible men in my life who are not insecure of my success, but I have also met men who were very insecure of my success. I think that men have enjoyed the freedom and the pride of being the breadwinners, the leaders of the family that it’s threatening to their territory, when a woman is more successful. When a man is staying at home and woman goes to work, he will feel bad, but we have to teach our sons that, ‘There is no shame in crying! There’s no shame in tears! There’s no shame in being able to share with your sister, your mother or your girlfriend the opportunities or the spotlight!’ It’s an amazing thing. My dad did that to my mother. When my mother was getting into private practice and he was still into military, my mom started earning more than my father but they saw it as a unit, because money was coming in the same house. So he did not have that ego and that’s what I saw in my house. So now today when I am walking on a red carpet with my husband, he steps aside and gives me the center stage, I feel very proud that I have surrounded myself with my father, my husband, my in-laws, my friends with people who don’t have that insecurity. So we as a race, as a society need to raise those kind of men that don’t feel insecure about these things. There are so many things to be insecure about, why are you comparing these things? Let everyone be successful! In the end it’s going to come in your house itself.
