PRIYANKA VS THE POISON PEN
The newlywed actress has been vilified in a vicious article
Priyanka Chopra
under fire
SHE was still basking in the glow of her glorious wedding, a three-day cross-cultural affair filled with song and dance that was, by all accounts, a treat for everyone lucky enough to attend. But the sound of music and fireworks were still ringing in Priyanka Chopra’s ears when an article mired in meanness wormed its way onto the internet.
“Priyanka Chopra is a modern-day scam artist,” writer and comedian Mariah Smith wrote on The Cut, New York Magazine’s website that purports to cover issues “that matter to women with stylish minds”.
“That’s right,” she added. “Nicholas Jonas married into a fraudulent relationship against his will this past Saturday and I’ll tell you why I think so.”
The article, titled Is Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas’ Love for Real?, went on to say Priyanka (36) had seduced Nick (26) into marrying her to raise her profile in Tinseltown. “All Nick wanted was a possible fling with Hollywood’s lat- est It woman,” she went on. “But instead he wound up staring at a life sentence with a global scam artist.”
The backlash that resulted from the article practically broke the internet. Indian actress Sonam Kapoor called it “sexist, racist and disgusting”.
Sophie Turner, fiancée of Nick’s brother Joe, called it “wildly inappropriate” and hit out at The Cut for allowing anyone to “spew such bulls**t”. Joe also weighed in. “What Nick and Pri have is beautiful love,” he tweeted.
The Cut deleted the story in the face of the fury and apologised. “The whole piece missed the mark,” a statement said. “There’s no good explanation for this other than human error and poor judgment.” Mariah was sorry too. “I don’t condone racism, xenophobia or sexism. I take full responsibility for what I wrote and I was wrong.”
As for Priyanka, she refused to enter the fray. “I don’t even want to react or comment,” she told the Hindustan Times from India where she and Nick are still celebrating. “It’s not even in my stratosphere. I’m in a happy place at the moment. These random things can’t disturb it.”
SEVERAL have suggested the article was intended to come across as satirical and tongue in cheek rather than downright bitter and twisted. But above all else it’s ironic –
because the mere suggestion that marrying a former Disney star would raise Priyanka’s profile is laughable.
She’s the most successful actor ever to make the leap from Bollywood star to American celebrity. She’s the first Indian to appear on the cover of Variety magazine and next month she’ll be the first Indian on the US issue of Vogue.
Time and Forbes have listed her among the most influential people in the world.
Her beauty has helped, of course – she was Miss World 2000 and it paved the way for the future.
But she’s her own person, says Subhash Jha, a leading Indian film critic, and she’s smart. Her shift to Hollywood is different from that other Indian actors.
“This is the first time an Indian has been cast not as an ‘Indian’,” he says. “Nowhere has she been made to speak in a sing-song voice or even play an Indian actress.”
She knew what she wanted when she left India for America and she was prepared to put in the hard work to get there.
Priyanka is the daughter of Indian army physicians Ashok and Madhu Chopra and spent three years as a teenager with an aunt in America, going to school, embracing the culture and practising the accent.
She was just 18 when she won Miss World and abandoned her plan to study aeronautical engineering for the bright lights of Bollywood.
Her first major role was in the 2003 spy thriller The Hero: Love Story of a Spy and more than 50 Bollywood films over the course of 12 years followed, with Priyanka playing everything from a boxer to a model and an autistic teenager.
She was never content with playing arm candy or a damsel in distress, says Raja Sen, another Indian film critic.
“Priyanka came along and started doing really feisty roles,” he says. “She wasn’t going to be just another pretty girl. She might not have always pulled it off but she was bringing something to the table.”
BY 2015 Priyanka was an Indian megastar and started setting her sights on Hollywood. One of her first TV appearances in the US was as a singer on the NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football series. She put in the legwork, Sen says. She went to auditions and was “prepared to do what it took” to get roles.
“She didn’t portray herself as this unattainable woman from a mysterious country,” he told The Guardian.
“She tried to straddle both cultures, which I think none of the Indian actors could do. They were presented as these ethereal, beautiful women from the east who were fetishised for their Indianness.”
When she signed on to play the lead in ABC drama series Quantico, she became the first South Asian to win a role in the show – but it had nothing to do with her background. Her character, FBI agent Alex Parrish, is “ethnically ambiguous”, Priyanka says, and it was what drew her to the role. “I wanted to be taken seriously as an actor and not for the colour of my skin.” In Baywatch, Priyanka played a Colombian businesswoman who controls the drug trade on the beach while figures in red bathing suits bob around her. “It was a horrifically bad film,” Sen says. “But even then she was the villain. She got more visibility.” A lot of it hinges on Priyanka’s ability to embrace “this all-American girl persona”, he says. “When all these [other Indian] actresses did their thing on the TV talkshow circuit, Aishwarya Rai draped a sari around Oprah, and Deepika Padukone did the lungi dance with James Corden. But Priyanka was eating chicken wings with Jimmy Fallon.” Priyanka has also managed to manoeuvre her way up the A-list ladder, which is why she found herself invited to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding this year. It’s safe to say she’s achieved global superstardom – so when it comes to the thorny issue of whose star received a bigger boost by the spectacularly lavish nuptials of “Nickyanka”, as the couple are being called, there’s little doubt in Priyanka’s countrymen’s minds. “Ah yes, Priyanka Chopra,” one of the actress’ Indian fans tweeted, “Former Miss World, beloved by a billion, only brown actor to win mainstream recognition and roles in the US is definitely the one running a scam and taking advantage of . . . *checks notes* “That guy from Camp Rock.”