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Video Credits
Video by: Guillaume Langlois
A constellation of Hollywood stars sparkled across Los Angeles’s storied Dolby Theatre, making their way to the 88th Academy Awards this February, but my eyes stayed glued to a beguiling Indian import as she sailed into view. In her sheer ivory Zuhair Murad gown and 50-carat diamonds, a winning combo that’s earned her a coveted spot on various best-dressed lists, actor Priyanka Chopra, slated to present an award that evening, fielded a dizzying range of red-carpet queries. On several occasions, she made sure to mention that she’d work the after-party circuit, then hop on a red-eye to Miami, where her latest Hollywood project, a 2017 Baywatch reboot, beckoned. She remained poised and unflappable, punctuating all her answers with an incandescent smile—surely, a learning from her Miss World days—and a healthy dash of self-deprecation. “I just don’t want to screw up anyone’s name, you know?” she told E! News’s Ryan Seacrest, who appeared visibly disarmed by that admission.
I was catapulted back to a Manhattan press conference, circa September 2015. I’d sat just a few feet away from Chopra (who was in town to promote her then brand-new American television show,Quantico) and was basking in the actor’s second-hand stardust while the voice recorder in my hands trembled slightly. As she hopscotched between Hindi and English, confessing a deep love for Burger King Whoppers while recapping a childhood that included shuttling across various cities in India (her parents were military doctors) in addition to a four-year stay in the US as a teen, it occurred to me that the powerhouse and I, a freshly-minted Indian-American who had arrived by way of Japan, shared an unlikely trait: we were both unable to neatly gift-wrap our histories and hometowns when prodded about where we were “really” from, comfortably residing outside the traditional conventions of nationality. It’s partly why I’ve rooted for her since.
“There is no strategy”
Her résumé mirrors a steady build-up to a crescendo—with the occasional wrong note, of course. After all, it’s hard to forget that Chopra’s fledgling Bollywood career, the obvious next step for Miss World 2000, consisted of a clutch of bland rom-coms. It was only in 2008, when she snagged the lead in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion, a film that captured the murky warts-and-all underbelly of glamour, that she leapt towards the big leagues. At a time when female-centric storylines were considered the ultimate swan songs in testosterone-riddled Bollywood, Chopra’s uninhibited performance as a small-town beauty with supermodel ambitions swivelled heads for its stark vulnerability, resulting in a National Film Award for Best Actress and meatier subsequent roles.
Then she veered West in 2012, recording a track with Black Eyed Peas singer will.i.am and subsequently producing an earworm of a single, ‘Exotic’, joining forces with international rapper Pitbull. While the tunes themselves were lukewarm at best, they spurred bigger things, including a sultry stint in a Guess ad campaign and the lead role in Quantico, a terrorism-themed mystery that made her the first Indian actor to bag top billing in an American television drama when it premiered on ABC last September.
“There is no strategy,” insists the 33-year-old, who carved out the time for an early-morning phone call from Montreal, Canada, where she was logging superhuman hours shooting for Quantico. Chopra plays Alex Parrish, a fearless Indian-American FBI recruit framed for executing the deadliest attack on New York City since 9/11. It’s easy to see how that twisty role, the first part Chopra ever had to formally audition for, served as the unofficial try-out to the aforementioned Baywatch remake, where she’ll play a baddie, single-handedly taking on an elite crew of lifeguards, starring heavy-hitters like Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock and Zac Efron. “Let me show you how slow-motion running is done, Hollywood!” she quips with a throaty giggle. For a moment, I’m unsure of where her cinematic loyalty lies before reminding myself that rather than claiming just Hollywood or Bollywood, she’s on a trailblazing mission to embrace both.
Read the whole interview in Vogue India’s April 2016 issue that hits stands on April 2, 2016. Subscribe to the print edition or get the single digital copy now.
Photographed by Chris Craymer; Styled by Priyanka Kapadia; Hair: Julie Saint-Laurent/Next Canada using Label.m (Priyanka), Nisha Gulati/Folio Montreal (cheerleaders); Make-up: Hung Vanngo/The Wall Group (Priyanka), Alexandre Deslauriers/Folio Montreal (cheerleaders); Models: Karina Savoie/Dulcedo Management, Ann-Sophie Mongeau/Agence France Dionne, Kathy Maguire; Photographer’s agency: Sarah Laird and Good Company; Photographer’s assistants: Dong Loga, Pablo Calderón-Santiago; Assistant stylist: Rima Chahine; Hair assistant: Alexandra Muñoz; Digital imaging: Alex Dow Production (Eloi Beauchamp, Karyne Bond, Nicolas Chabot/l’Éloi), Julia Ferrier, Divya Jagwani
