The accidental beauty queen
Quantico’s Priyanka Chopra wanted to be an engineer but fate intervened
Will Priyanka Chopra become the first major Bollywood star to make it big in U.S. TV?
ABC certainly hopes so. Chopra has the lead role in the network’s hyped new drama Quantico, premiering Sunday on ABC and CTV.
Chopra plays Alex Parrish, one of a group of recruits training at the FBI’s Quantico base.
The high-concept concept is that one of the recruits is behind a deadly terrorist attack on Grand Central Station in New York City, the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11. That attack happens several months after the training, and each episode flashes back and forth between the two time periods.
In the first episode, we find out that Parrish is the main suspect in the attack. Like Carrie Mathison in Homeland, she is going to have to find out who the real terrorist is to save her own skin.
The first episode also happens to have an unusual sex scene right at the start. Unusual for network TV, in the sense that it’s casual sex and the female character — Parrish — makes it clear she has no issue with doing it in the front seat of a car with a guy whose name she doesn’t even know.
Bollywood actresses don’t normally do this kind of thing. Chopra admitted she is not enthused about the notion of explicit sex scenes.
“Maybe it’s because I’m Indian or how I was raised, or because of the fact that I’m shy. I think that it’s sexier when it’s alluded (to),” she said. “It’s more poetic and it’s more artistic. When it’s all out there to see, it’s not sexy anymore.”
Chopra said she’s loving her first Hollywood TV experience and is totally into playing this budding FBI agent.
“She’s so badass, but at the same time she doesn’t have to lose her femininity to be macho,” she said. “Usually when you show tough girls, they have to be super machismo. And she’s not. She’s vulnerable. She’s all woman. But at the same time, she can kick some serious ass. And I love that.”
Little known to mainstream audiences in North America, Chopra is a huge star in her home country. A former Miss World winner, she has starred in dozens of Bollywood films and has had big hits as a singer in India. Her first single, In My City, which featured Black Eyed Peas rapper will.i.am, debuted during an ad in the NFL’s Thursday Night Football broadcast in 2012, but it tanked in the U.S.
Her career kicked off when her mother signed her up for the Miss India pageant in 2000.
“I wanted to be an engineer,” said Chopra. “I wanted to build planes. I was a physics and math student, as all good Indian girls are. Extremely smart. Honours student and all of that. I went to school in Newton (Mass.) and Queens in America, and in 11th grade I decided I wanted to go back (to India).
“My mom thought I was really pretty and she sent in my pictures to Miss India without my knowledge ... I was 17 and I won it. And it was ridiculous, because now I got to represent my country for Miss World, and it was the millennium year and it was happening at the Millennium Dome.”
The movie offers started pouring in and Chopra figured she might as well give it a whirl — she was only 18 and really had nothing to lose. The movies started doing well. “I never looked back,” said Chopra, 33. “I guess I’m destiny’s other favourite child besides Beyonce.”
She has a huge fan base, underlined by her social-media presence, including 11 million followers on Twitter, 16.7 million on Facebook and three million on Instagram. But she seems remarkably grounded about it all.
“At 17, no one really knows what they want to be,” said Chopra. “Somehow destiny helped me find my vocation, and then I treated it like a craft. It took me at least three years to realize that this is professional. That I can create characters. It’s magical.”