‘I want a legacy’

Actress Priyanka Chopra calls herself a proud feminist and wants to prop other women up on her shoulders. By Asmita Sarkar

Like her character Alex Parrish in Quantico, with which she arrived in the Western world as an immigrant who changed popular discourse, Priyanka Chopra believes she’s a modern empowered woman, who doesn’t want to be judged for her choices. Perhaps, this was her way of getting back at critics who were questioning her for reneging on plum Bollywood assignments and choosing her own path of happiness or another career frontier in Hollywood. “I get crazy critiqued for simple decisions I make,” she told columnist Vir Sanghvi at a session  titled, “Challenging the Status Quo & Forging New Paths,” organised by the FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO).

And in a veiled attempt at explaining why she gave Bollywood biggies (she reportedly turned down even a Bhansali project) the short shrift, she indicated that she was conditioning herself to healthier realities of equality. She explained how in Bollywood there was less opportunity for leading ladies and they had to elbow each other out and put each other down. “Eventually, I realised that I don’t want that. I taught myself to be confident but I also want to prop other women up on my shoulder.”

She also firmly settled all debate about letting people into her space: “My personal life is not for public consumption. Ninety per cent of my life is for public consumption but 10 per cent is for me. I am a girl and I have the right to keep that to myself. My family, friendship, my relationships are things I don’t think I need to defend or explain to anyone. I am not running for any office, so I don’t think I need to give explanations.”

Chopra recently bid goodbye to the character Alex Parrish, an FBI agent in New York. The character, she said, was written for an American woman and the show creators initially thought of changing the name of the character but she refused since it was her job as an actor to make people believe that she was American. The accent was, therefore,  something she had to train for. “It took me three days to say counter terrorism task force in an American accent.”

She might have started in the Hindi film industry, where she recently courted controversy by giving up on Bharat, a project with Salman Khan, in favour of what has been touted as matrimony. But she said, she doesn’t believe that she has to work exclusively in one industry anymore. She has her foot in both worlds, where she’s producing and acting in films and exploring other meaningful art forms like documentaries and TV shows. Chopra, who’s going to begin shoot for The Sky is Pink, which she is co-producing with Farhan Akhtar, is back after a while to work in Bollywood. In this film, she’ll play a mother to a 18-year-old and she said she’s open to playing characters of different ages. It is based on the life of Aisha Chaudhary, who became a motivational speaker after being diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 13. Her production company is working not just on the regional space in India but also in creating documentaries and TV shows in the US.

Asked what remains on her bucket list, she said she wanted to leave a legacy behind that would inspire young people. She joked, “I wanted to wear the iconic Baywatch swimsuit but my character wanted to kill the lifeguards, not be them. The character was written for a man but I got to play it. People saw it around the world and I was not limited by my ethnicity or gender.”

Chopra was quite clear about the characters that she did not want to play. Said she, “Characters like South Asians, who are played in a stereotypical way like Apu in Simpsons, are easy to come by. But  I was able to execute one of them without compromising.” Quantico came to her after the VP of casting at ABC approached her. However, she too had to audition for the role. “After 50 films, I was still nervous but then I thought that 1/5th of the world’s population thinks you’re talented, there must be something in you,”  she said.

However, she said that she’s not impatient with those who wonder how she speaks good English. “I like to educate people. I tell them India was colonised by the British and they left the language behind. Ten per cent of Indians speak English. So by sheer numbers, there are a large number of Indians who can speak the language.”

She didn’t assume that people would know her and her work in the US just because she was a star in India. “I’m not entitled. I have no qualms introducing myself. I have also learnt to deal with rejection. Despite Quantico, I was told that they want people with a certain physicality. But I knew I wanted to be a leading lady in a mainstream movie in the US.”

Priyanka said even though she appears confident in front of the world, she still get serious nerves when going on the set. “I like nervous energy when I walk on to a set. Because if I don’t feel like that then I can’t perform somehow. I will be complacent and it is boring,” she added. “My biggest fear is failure. I hate failures. I am miserable when I fail. My mom tells everyone, ‘Let her be alone for while,’ whenever I fail. But because I am so afraid of failing that I developed a way of not being nervous,” Priyanka said.

For her latest project, which goes on the floors soon, she said that she met Aisha Chaudhary’s mother to observe her and make character notes. “I get to play a real person again after Mary Kom.” With the global citizen tag, Chopra can now afford to keep it real.

Photo: Pankaj Kumar