‘I HAD TO CHOOSE MYSELF, MULTIPLE TIMES’ Priyanka Chopra Jonas opens up about love and grief
Since being crowned Miss World 21 years ago, Priyanka Chopra Jonas has had quite an evolution. As she shares her story in a revealing new memoir, Unfinished, she opens up to Arielle Tchiprout about love, grief, and the gift of choice
When Priyanka Chopra Jonas arrives on our Zoom call, I’m taken by how regal she appears. Her fuchsia-pink silk blouse is matched with her lipstick, her hair is styled in a sophisticated up-do and there are sparkling diamonds in her ears and around her neck. She sits poised at a large desk, in front of a roaring fire, which only adds to the grandeur. The whole scene could easily pass as a public video to address her adoring fans.
I suppose this is fitting, really. Chopra Jonas did, after all, begin her 21-year career as a beauty queen, earning the highly-coveted Miss World crown at the age of 18. The win catapulted her to superstardom, first as an award-winning Bollywood actress, and then in Hollywood, becoming the first Indian-born woman to lead an American network series in 2015’s ABC drama Quantico.
With more than 60 films, including Baywatch and Isn’t It Romantic, under her belt, her most recent accomplishment has been producing and starring in Netflix’s adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker-prizewinning novel The White Tiger, a role that earned her widespread critical acclaim. And her royal credentials go further still; she’s a committed feminist and philanthropist, working as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, alongside her own charity, The Priyanka Chopra Foundation for Health and Education, which supports children, mostly girls, in India.
For Chopra Jonas, home is now in Los Angeles with her husband-of-two-years, actor and singer Nick Jonas (one third of the Jonas Brothers), but she’s speaking to me from the house she’s currently renting in London. Despite lockdown, filming has taken place on her latest romantic drama, Text For You, and she’s about to start work on the Amazon Prime thriller series Citadel, in which she’ll star alongside Game Of Thrones’s Richard Madden.
Like me, she’s missing the pre-pandemic buzz of London life. ‘I love the energy of it,’ she gushes. ‘I love finding new spots to eat, going to concerts, going to the pubs.’ At first, it’s hard to imagine this glittering Hollywood A-lister in a humble British tavern, but as we chat, I see a different side of Chopra Jonas. She’s an avid reader and a deep thinker; she’s self-deprecating and funny. I’m confident she’d be excellent company for sharing a bottle of wine and a packet of crisps.
Despite her pile of screen projects, we’re here to talk about her first memoir, Unfinished. Filled with funny misadventures and smart insights, the book is startlingly vulnerable and honest. She describes advertising skin-lightening products as ‘one of the biggest missteps of my career, and one of my most profound regrets’. She reveals how a brief stint in music ‘fell short of my artistic standards and expectations’. And she describes, in moving detail, the grief that consumed her when she lost her father in 2013.
I ask her why, aged 38, it felt like the right time to write. ‘I’m much more secure in my life than I’ve ever been, so I felt like I could tackle my insecurities and mistakes,’ she says. ‘I wrote it during quarantine, and it was almost like a journal. I think because that was such a vulnerable time, it became very personal.’
Its pages begin with an insight into Chopra Jonas’s joyous, nomadic childhood. Her enigmatic parents, Ashok and Madhu, were military medics, so she and her younger brother, Sid, spent their formative years moving around India. Chasing adventure, when she was just 13, Chopra Jonas went to live with her aunt for three years in the US, attending high-schools in Iowa, New York and Massachusetts. ‘My father always said, “Whenever you go to a new place, or are thrown into a new situation, you have a blank slate. You can be whoever you want to be,”’ she recalls. ‘It’s very empowering to be told, at a young age, that you’re not defined by who you once were.’
At first, with her father’s advice in mind, Chopra Jonas loved her time in the States, but things took a turn for the worse when she was confronted with racist bullies while at school in Massachusetts. They would yell ‘Brownie, go back to your country’ and ‘Do you smell curry coming?’, she writes in her memoir, revealing how after the taunting,
she couldn’t maintain her sense of self-worth. ‘I started to believe I was less than those around me,’ she writes.
Her parents brought her home to India, where she rebuilt her confidence and fell, accidentally, into beauty pageants. Chopra Jonas was on track to become an aeronautical engineer, when Sid begged their mum to enter her into the Miss India pageant. Why? To get his old bedroom back. ‘Can you imagine?’ she laughs now at this twist of fate.
Safe to say, Sid’s plan worked. Chopra Jonas quickly found herself among ‘perfect, tall, gliding angels’ in the Miss India pageant, and, to her shock, beat them all to the crown. She credits her victory to her adaptability and competitive streak. ‘Winning drives me. Even if you play a board game with me – I’m that girl,’ she grins.
Less than a year later, in 2000, Chopra Jonas was crowned Miss World, and she returned to India a celebrity; the Bollywood film offers came in thick and fast. ‘Suddenly, my life was upside down, and it was terrifying. I tried to go back to college, but it was really weird. I was followed. I realised my options were to sink or swim,’ she pauses. ‘And I don’t like the feeling of sinking, I never have.’
So, Chopra Jonas dove into the deep end, and swam. After making her film debut in a supporting role in The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy, one Bollywood blockbuster came after another. But with little acting experience, she explains, she had to learn on the job. ‘I didn’t know a percentage of what I know now as an actor,’ she reflects. ‘There were times I was knocked to my face and had to eat dirt, and I had to dust myself off and say, “All right, I’m going to pivot and try something else.”’
Having cracked Bollywood, she later set her sights on Hollywood. ‘I knew it wasn’t common to see actors of South Asian descent in roles beyond the side-kick, tech nerd, or exotic love interest,’ she writes in Unfinished, so when she landed the lead in Quantico as fierce FBI agent Alex Parrish, it was a big deal. ‘I wanted mainstream parts,’ she says now. ‘I didn’t want to be confined to the stereotype of what an Indian girl should be. That was my fight – and I’m still working on it.’ Indeed, in 2015, Chopra Jonas launched her production company, Purple Pebble Pictures, and now she’s developing multiple projects for Amazon after signing a multi-mllion-dollar first-look deal with the company last year. Her focus? Spotlighting diverse global talent. ‘As time goes on, it’s definitely getting easier,’ she reflects, citing the huge success of The White Tiger, one of her first major production credits. The comedic thriller about ambition and desire had an all-indian star cast and was shot in India. ‘I don’t think five years ago it would have been made with the kind of budget it had,’ she admits. ‘With streaming and content becoming global, it’s giving diversity a chance. I’m excited to be on that precipice.’
Amid all the success, there have been struggles. When her larger-than-life father passed away in 2013, following a long battle with cancer, she turned inward, sinking into what she now sees was a depressive state for several years. ‘I didn’t speak to friends; I would work, come home and watch TV,’ she recalls. ‘Sadness is strangely seductive. It’s comfortable. And light is the opposite; it’s harsh, and it can be blinding, but it’s also what gives us life.’
In 2017, Chopra Jonas began to walk back into the light. ‘I started reaching out to people and taking deliberate steps to get back into the world, rather than the bubble I had created,’ she says. ‘I actively had to choose myself, multiple times.’ Now, she tries to remember her dad by embodying his zest for adventure and spontaneity: ‘I forgot about that for a while, but I’m trying to bring that back into my life.’
Undoubtedly, one of Chopra Jonas’s biggest adventures has been her whirlwind romance with her husband; the pair dated for only a few months before their engagement in July 2018. She explains how in the past, she often lost herself in relationships. ‘I spent a lot of time not thinking about myself, but the other person.’ she reflects. ‘I wish I
‘I didn’t want to be confined to the stereotypes of what an Indian girl should be’
could tell my younger self not to seek validation. How you are loved is not a testament of who you are.’ But Jonas, who is 10 years her junior, gave her the space to be herself. ‘I’d never had that before, where my job, desire and ambition took precedence. Where it was not just okay, but a priority,’ she says. ‘I was so shocked that I just kept riding that wave.’
After proposing on the Greek island of Crete, it was Jonas who insisted they marry in India; his effortless assimilation into her extended family and enjoyment of Indian customs was a big deal for Chopra Jonas. The couple’s wedding consisted of a Hindu ceremony, a Christian celebration and a traditional musical ‘sangeet’, which also happens to be the inspiration behind an Amazon reality show that Chopra Jonas and Jonas will be producing together.
Just over two years on and Chopra Jonas enthuses that ‘good conversation’ is ‘the sexiest thing in our relationship. We can spend hours just talking and meandering’.
‘I really take the time to smell the roses, and I choose to approach things with optimism and joy,’ she says. I comment that choice, and choosing wisely, seems like a mantra for Chopra Jonas, and she agrees: ‘So many people, girls especially, have their lives dictated to them. So I believe that for those of us who have the gift of choice, we have to choose intentionally. I think that’s our purpose.’
So, what will she choose next? Acting, producing and philanthropy all take precedence, but, she says, ‘I love tech, so this year, you’re going to see me investing, maybe even founding something.’ It seems that for Chopra Jonas, the world is her oyster. Long may she reign.