LIVING A FAIRYTALE Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra dives into Baywatch.
After winning a role on ‘Quantico’ the barrier-breaking Bollywood star dives into ‘Baywatch’ breaking n
Her villainous role in the new big-screen Baywatch was originally written for a man, but Priyanka Chopra knew she could do it better—while wearing sky-high heels. On the sand. “How many girls can say they took on the Rock?” she asks with a laugh. Plus, her “delectable” part as a wicked business mogul came with a couture wardrobe rather than the iconic swimsuits worn by the rest of the cast. “You need to be on a diet of, like, one olive,” she says of her co-stars’ discipline. “I’m not like that as a person, you know? I like my food. I could sit and eat whatever I wanted while everyone else was going to the gym.” As for the secret to strutting in heels on the beach? “Always walk on your toes. It’s so absurd that it’s fabulous.”
Chopra, 34, knows her way around fabulous. A Bollywood megastar in her native India, the former Miss World broke out in the US in 2015 with her role as an FBI agent—initially written for an American—on Seven’s Quantico. Since then she has dazzled fans onscreen and off, most recently at the Met Gala on May 1, where she slayed fashion critics in a risky Ralph Lauren trench dress. Later she and actor Aziz Ansari marvelled at how much Hollywood has diversified. She
recalls: “Aziz said, ‘A couple of years ago at this gala, I saw, like, one other brown person, and today there were like six of us in that room!’”
Yes, there’s still progress to be made, “and the struggle is real,” she says. “People want to put you in a box. When I started out, at auditions people would be like, ‘Can you use your Indian accent?’ And I’m like, ‘I am speaking in my Indian accent. This is how we speak in modern India!’” Chopra credits her dad, Ashok, who died of cancer in 2013, with giving her the confidence to break the mould: “He always told me, ‘Why do you want to fit into a glass slipper? Shatter it. That’s somebody else’s slipper.’” Her right wrist features the tattoo “Daddy’s Lil Girl,” and she says she is still dealing with her grief from his death. “It’s a constant companion, a void that will always exist. And it’s OK.”
She has drawn inspiration from others as well, including the young women she met during a trip to Africa as a UNICEF ambassador. “They live with so many hardships, and yet they smile, they hope.” As for her own career dreams: “The Bollywood stereotype is that we randomly break into song and dance. The American stereotype is superhero movies. I want to do a superhero movie!”