Chopra Dreams Of Playing A Man In A Movie
In a film career spanning over 15 years, Priyanka Chopra has essayed diverse roles and paved her way into Hollywood like no other Indian actress has.
Now she says it’s her dream to play a man and she is eyeing Broadway too. At an interactive session for Ficci FLO, Priyanka spoke strongly about how her Quantico character Alex Parrish was unapologetic for choices -- something that all women need to be.
“Alex to me is an unapologetic modern female who lives life on her terms. She is extremely flawed, she’s not perfect, she’s a loner, she doesn’t like people, she only uses people... So, she’s basically playing a man, which is awesome, because girls don’t get to play that... And I was like
‘Yes, we get to turn the tables’,” Priyanka said.
“It’s my dream to be able to play a man...
That’s the next thing
I want to do,” added the actress, who also expressed a desire to do
Broadway as she loves watching theatrical productions when she is in New York.
“You’re already playing characters which were written for men, aren’t you,” asked the moderator alluding to Priyanka’s role as the villain in Baywatch?
“No... I am playing modern women... Alex Parrish is a modern woman. A modern woman is an empowered woman who wants to value herself. “The only thing she asks for is ‘let me make my own decisions without being judged for it’. That’s the freedom that men have experienced for so many years... And that’s all the women want unapologetically,” Priyanka said to an applause from an audience full of women of diverse age groups. When Priyanka landed a chance to play Alex, she broke barriers to become the first South Asian woman to headline an American network series. “I’ve lived in America as a child, and my biggest pet peeve then was not seeing anyone on the television who looked like me. So whenever you saw Indians in global mainstream entertainment, you always saw them in a box of the nerds, the big fat Punjabi family wedding or the shopkeeper or Apu from The Simpsons...
“Why could we not go beyond that? Why did our ethnicity define the roles we played? So, the only thing I told the people was that don’t come to me with a show based on a big Punjabi wedding, I won’t do it... I don’t want to be put in a box and I don’t want my ethnicity to define the roles I take on.” Quantico had her play a half Indian, and that had nothing to do with the story.