I feel the more capable of dealing with life if it's thrown at me. I feel a lot more at peace. I feel the mean to choose joy.
Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dared to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman.
Hi.
Everyone, I apologize if my voice is a little scratchy. I hosted my two daughters third and fifth birthday party over the weekend and I am left physically drained. But I'm very excited to bring you this week's episode with Prianca Chopra Jonas. She has been a dream guest of
mine since forever. Her pivot from Bollywood to Hollywood at the height of her career has always intrigued me, but in truth, I thought her other ventures, like in the restaurant industry, hair care products, philanthropy, and investments might be the focus of our discussion. Though she does own the restaurant Sona in New York City and have her hair care line called Anomaly, her pivot into Hollywood was ultimately what shaped and defined the new trajectory of her career.
During our conversation, Prianca dives into what it means to be a new mom and how her definition of success has changed over the years.
Enjoy I'm Priyanka and I'm an actor by profession, but I enjoy doing a lot of things at the same time.
Which identity do you feel like you're the strongest in at any moment.
I feel like I know my craft as an actor the most. But I think I'm a homebody, like I love family, friends, being at home always since I was a kid, being that person like looking for adventure. But I think I identify most as an actor.
So if we go back to little pre growing up, what did you think you wanted to be when you grew up.
I had amazing examples with my parents, with my aunts and uncles. Everyone was very academic, you know, doctors, engineers, but everyone went to work. There was a consistency around the fact that people could work and then you come back home and everyone has dinner together. There was a normality around it. So I just wanted to be something different every year. Some days I was just like, I don't want to do anything when I grow up. I want to be an adult because in your brain you
think that adults really can do nothing right. And then there were days I wanted to be like an astrophysicist, So I had my days. I think I hadn't finished figuring out what and who I wanted to be when I fell upon my vocation, you know, yeah, and then became my job.
Yeah.
Well, you moved back and forth or into the US and kind of around the US a lot when you were young. How do you think that that impacted your perception of what it meant to be like grown up or how you were going to be a grown up?
Coming to the US when I was thirteen definitely defined me in a big way because my mom went back home and she went to India, and I was living with my aunt and uncle, who were highly strict and conservative because obviously I was somebody else's teenager that was living with them, and I wasn't an easy kid. I
didn't make it very easy on them. But I think I already thought I was an adult because now I was living without my parents, and I had moved continents, and I thought that I had done so much that other kids my age hadn't done. So I used to write letters to my friends from America and being like, oh, yeah, you know, make up stuff, like I went to the mall and it was just so fun. I really thought I was a grown up for my whole teenage years.
Was it sort of a shock to move back to India with your parents and you're like, oh, yeah, my parents again.
Yeah, that was a shock because mine was really unique as a story because I lived with my aunt and uncle, my mom's sister, and my cousins in you know, Boston, New York. I was for like a good three four years, so I was like twelve thirteen, and then I was sixteen, and then suddenly I go back to a small town in India, and my parents were so happy that I was back. But I went like, you know, a flat chested twelve year old, and I came back home American
hormones and all like a curvy sixteen year old. And my dad, I think was intimidated by me. I think he was just like, I don't know what to do with this, you know, girl child woman that I had in my home. So he had to really grapple with that. And I, you know, had come back from this. I
was very confident. I liked attention I loved boys. At this time, I had just figure out that I was a girl and had crushes, and so suddenly I felt really grown up compared to the other sixteen year olds in Burreley, which is a small town in India, where they used to listen to my stories that like as if there were adventures from across the like almost like a pirate. I felt like I could I could tell anyone any story and there would be like an arrested
audience listening to me. It was really was. It was fun.
Sounds actually really fun. So did you feel like going into pageants felt like kind of natural then, because it was around that time that you started right, You're so.
Right, I think in my vain teenage mind, you know. And I was really popular in my small town because of the fact that I'd come back from the States, and I used to behave like I was twenty two even though I was sixteen with everyone, you know, the younger girls in my school Army school would take autographs from me and get me to sign their books and stuff. And I was really feeling myself. Honestly, you know, I'm
more independent than any of these roles. They don't know what it is to be a woman, and I take these like soft focused small shots. So when I got this phone call from Miss India, can you imagine my like narcissistic self at sixteen, was like, oh my gosh, they've probably heard about me.
In fact, it was actually her younger brother who submitted her for the Miss India pageant after a sibling fight over who would get the bedroom. He checked with their mom that Brianca would have to move away if accepted, and after confirming she would be out of the room, he sent in an application. Okay, so you see this ad in this matter.
Ten year old Sid sees this ad and he tells my mom she'll have to move to Mumbai, right if she wins this thing. Aca I didn't send my pictures and stuff in for the pageant, and my mom and my brother sentlers. My mother was sen years old. They sent those pictures in from Miss India. Miss Indians was very popular in India at that time. And you know I've got a phone call for semi finals Miss India. I think she might be the popular either India or
tasty Indian Missus. Of course. Polanka Chapra, very beautiful.
Lighty, eighteen years old, and she's a woman that loves sunts, anouncing and no Indian fight.
And go school. Our next summer finalists, Miss India Popular.
Yeah, this pred to kick off the new millennium. Prianca won Miss World in two thousand. The win launched her into the spotlight and that confidence she had as a teenager began to pay off. But I mean, you had such success at it so quickly. Did it feel like confirmation for you? Or did it feel scary a.
Little bit of bows? I realized like my nature. And I was talking about this to my mom yesterday, So it's really interesting that you're asking me that today. I believe it. I was talking to her about consistent traits that I've had since I was My mom's on tour with me, so because she's with the baby when I do press. My husband's on tour as well. So we were talking last night about consistent things that I do,
which I have done since I was young. So you know, like when I was three, I had this toy which you know, if you hit it, it comes back. In India, it was called to hit Me, So you hit it and it just rolls back at you, and you hit it and means to roll back at you, and somebody gave it to me. My mom said, when I was really like two or three, I hit it really hard and it came back and smacked me, and I fell down,
and I got really scared of it. But the choice I made when I was scared was I went back and hit it and took the air out of it, so then it could never hit me back, versus being afraid of it for the rest of my life. So I'm not want to run from a fight, like I'm not one to run from a challenge or something that scares me. And I think that's what happened at seventeen, Like I didn't know the terrain I was in. I'd
never modeled before. I didn't have the experience of the movie industry or the glamour industry or entertainment at all. I'm thrown into this whole new world. My parents didn't know it. They were both academic in a small town, middle class family and here we are in big bad Mumbai, and you know, there's It was just a whole change. And I think the same circumstances, it was like, Okay, let me figure out how to kill it, Like, how am I going to be the one that wins this.
How am I going to be the one that fines my nature's solution? Oriented I'm very like I can figure out the steps to get towards my goal. At that time, it was just instinctual, and my instinct just told me, I've got to learn, I've got to observe, I've got to see where I am and survive and in I think that discipline. My career has always been that. I never went to acting school. I learned on the job. I was on movies. I observed my pole stars, my directors.
I figured out I learned the technical side of cinema and filmmaking because I didn't know anything, so I kind of had to figure it out.
Brand new to the industry, she had to either sink or swim, So she dove in head first, learning everything and everyone she could in the entertainment industry in India.
Yeah, I've had multiple situations in my life where just you've got to just pivot and figure it out. And this first case that I'm talking about was being thrown into the deep end of pageants and I've never done that. I've never modeled. I didn't know what it was like to wear a gown or a sorry. I remember one of the supermodels of the time, her name was Madelsafre. She had told me, you know, you have to and walk.
Another one was Nionica at that time, Indian supermodel. You have to kick the heel for the inside of a gown or a starry or if anything is floor length, you kick the inside of it. So by the time it comes back, your second step is taken. You'll never
trip and you look like a model. And so those little like hips that I observed that I ask and befriended people, and you know that just kind of you have to pivot and you have to survive human beings inherently with survivors, and we have it inside of us. We just have to have confidence and treat ourselves with the faith that you can handle it. I think it is a very scary thing to be able to pivot into something that you don't know and that you're not
familiar with, that you don't have an understanding of. I made a career out of it, so I used to beat myself up about it all the time when I had failures or if I didn't know something, you know, I compared myself to people who had way more experience than me. I wanted to run before I could walk, and you can't do that. You kind of when you pivot. You can't run when you pivot. You have to just take a breath, take a second, take baby steps, take one step at a time, find your balance and then run.
She took off running. She made her on screen debut in two thousand and two and Bollywood debut in two thousand and three. From then on, she did multiple movies a year, becoming one of the most famous Bollywood actresses. I'm so curious to know how your idea of success evolved. Like, you know, when you were starting out in Bollywood, I mean you did like four to five movies a year. It was you did crazy volume of movies, Like was it?
I was greedy. I didn't want anyone else to get them. That's true, man, Like you know, you're the flavor of a season, and if you're the season's happening, you kind of like got a cash in on it. So at the beginning, success to me was having a next job, Like, oh my gosh, I have my next shop. Okay, I can breathe for another three months. Now, where am I going to go? To next and like, who am I meeting? Who's interested in me? What's my how do I keep
myself relevant? And that was success to me. And then like a couple of years into being good at my job now and people casting me in really interesting, complex roles, winning accolades, I kind of found stability a little bit and confidence in the fact that yeah I could. I was going to keep getting work because you know, people do like watching me in movies and the movies would do well. And then I decided to move to America started all over again.
It was a big risk. A few actors had moved from Bollywood to Hollywood at the time, and all of her relationships were in India, so pivoting to Hollywood meant starting from scratch. But after a few years of getting passed up for the dynamic roles she was looking for, it was time to move on. She decided to follow opportunity and when into the music industry as her path to break into the American market.
And that was early thirties. I was like, oh gosh, now, what has success to me? I wanted to be able to not it was a big risk. You know, I had a relatively relevant career in India and I was compelled to pivot and come to the States. And I was doing music at that time, but again something I had never done before. So I was like, okay, thrown into the deep end, working with like well, I am Pharrell, read one these amazing producers. I was like, I just
got to figure it out. So I took classes, I learned, and I just when the music came out, I felt a little manufactured, but I very quickly was like, I think I should go back to my day job, something that I have a little bit more control about and I know. And I started seeking work in America as an actor. So I'm seeking work in America. People really don't know me, and there was a stereotype around Bollywood actors and kind of felt like, will she be able
to do mainstream work. I played so many different kinds of roles, worked in many many different genres, worked with incredible filmmakers. I want to be able to do that here. I want to be able to work in international cinema. I want to be able to work in different languages in different industries, and I want to push myself. That kind of took a little bit of breaking down ceilings doing auditions, pivoting from what people thought I was capable of.
And I think then success was to get a job where you know, I was a lead.
So like everyone else, she auditioned a change from roles she had just been offered from the time she had won Miss World. She eventually landed the lead role in a primetime TV show, ABC's new thriller drama Quantico.
My name is Alex Parrish. Protecting our country had always been my dream. I want to go. They say it's the toughest boot camp, grad school all rolled into one.
Now, let's see if you can do that.
And So success and my relationship with success and what it means has been different at different times, as it is with everyone as your life and career changes. I also do enjoy evolving as a human being and as an artist, and I want to find like what the
next step is, what the next goal is. So I just turned forty that last year as well, and I feel like in this new decade of my life, I kind of want to push myself as an artist and see in this part of the world in America be able to work with the diversity of characters that I enjoyed in my work in Bollywood.
Brianca has an impressive roster of roles in movies in Bollywood and has now established herself as a force with her work in Hollywood. Just this spring, she has released two major productions, her show Citadel on Amazon Prime and her movie Love Again, which is out in theaters now. To have to films slash shows coming out that are so different when you play such different characters, what was
that like for you personally? Did they film in blocks that you could just finish one and go to the next, or did you have to go back and forth between I am.
So lucky that this was filmed in blocks. Both of them were. I shot Love Again twenty twenty like November, November and December. We finished in two months, and then January twenty twenty one I started Citadel and we finished next year. I think June was a year and a half of filming.
So your new show Citadel, which is out on Amazon right now, is a type of show that has never been done before, right, Yeah.
There's never been anything like this, not on film or on TV. Where multiple installments around the world are being created by local filmmakers, writers and top talent of industries. The biggest industries in the world which are like India, Italy and Hollywood right, So to have filmmakers and writers and talent from all three of them and storytelling that are interconnected is just a mammoth amazing ambition and is so I think cool too, and has such amazing foresight.
If you think about where the global industry is actually heading to. With streamers, people are not consuming entertainment just made in their own countries or their own language anymore. As someone who worked in Hindi language entertainment, to be able to see viewers consuming all kinds of languages. It's all about storytelling and the authenticity of the characters, and
it's so joyous to me. So I think the foresight of Citadel is very cool and it's foreshadowing towards how storytelling will be.
Do you see that as potentially your next I don't want to call it pivot, but like bridging between the Bollywood and Hollywood world, like to be in both versions.
Definitely, Definitely, that's like something that is I've always wanted to do it, But I intend to do another Indian movie next year with actually two of my active friends. One is called Aliabat and another one's called Kacriina CAF. They're amazing actresses and really successful superstars in India. So the three of us decided we're going to do a road trip movie together. So hopefully we do that next year.
But yes, the idea is there are very few actors that have enjoyed the ability to work seamlessly between two industries or two countries. You know, sama Hia did it for a bit, Penelope Cruise has done it. The Filler ended it with Italian movies. A Shwar I did it with Indian movies back in the day. I don't take that opportunity for granted. I want to definitely be able to as long as people enjoy watching me. I want to be able to work in both industries as much as I can.
Okay, So I just have to also ask you about the fact that you did a lot of your own stunts for Nadia, right.
So I come from the background of action movies. I have done a few in my bodywould work as well. And like this is fifteen years ago or so. When I was first doing little action in my movies, like I didn't even have like proper body double. I used to have like a little man in a wig that was dressed in my clothes with shaved arms and legs. Who would do the stunts, you know, and that's evolved
so much in cinema. So I really learned how to horne my craft, trust my body, do my stunts safely because I had to do a lot of it myself. And so, you know, the directors really wanted the actors' faces as much as we could in the stunt scenes because our characters are not superheroes. They're real human beings. They bleed, they get hurt, they die, so they wanted the gravity of that of the viewer to see that. So I'm not someone who does it because I get a kick out or a thrill out of it.
I would love to wrap early and go home, but it required a lot of training, a year and a half of working and with the stunt team and consistently preparing your body was like an athlete, consistently for a year and a half preparing your body for you know, being battered and thrown around and do that stuff.
I cannot tell you how excited it was the day wrapped. I ate so much for the next.
Two months as you're talking and I'm seeing your tattoo. I'm wondering how significant are your tattoos.
All my tattoos are very special, and all of them have a meaning. I have my dog's paws on my ankle, a little one, a medium one, or a large one. I have a German shepherd, a husky and a chuaa. So then I have this is my dad's handwriting, says Daddy's little girl. He's on me a little girl. And I got this my first tattoo a year before he passed.
And this is it's a chat. I don't know if you can see it, but it's a box and a check on this side, which my husband has on his arms as well, just because you know, I checked all his boxes. That's how he proposed. Oh my god, he said that. So that became our thing. So we commemorated it by getting cattooes together. That's great. And then I have the world on my arm because I feel like I belonged to the world. I love traveling, you know,
travel has been my best teacher. And when I put my arm down in india's right next to my heart.
Oh my god, that's amazing. So who do you feel like is your I don't know your mentors, your support network. Like as you go through these pivots, now, have you started to see trends?
Yeah? I am so grateful for my mom and my nanny. Like every single day, I you know, before I leave for work, I say thank you so much because you're here. I am able to go and do my work without thinking about it. I just think that people we get so caught up nowadays. It's so much easier for us to write on social media than it is to actually have him an interaction and tell someone that they're doing a good job or that you know it was that
you appreciate them. So in the same way and in the same vein, I think, you know, go up to people you look up to and admire and and you know, be nice and ask the questions because if you're not going to do it for yourself, honestly, no one's out there to do it for you totally.
So who have you done it to?
Everyone? So many people I work with, I mean, and I've done that with filmmaker friends of mine. I've told Joe if we do a season two, I'd love to like assist him, which I love to sit down and writer writers' rooms. I just listen when writers are ideating. So it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be someone that you know you're in awe of. You could it could be someone's work ethic that you admired, could be someone's mind that you admired, could be some
one who works with you and makes your life easier. Like, I don't know, maybe I'm in this phase in my life, but I just enjoy human human connection. I'm really enjoying human connection and just enjoying working and creating relationships with the people that I'm working with. It was something that I didn't invest in very much when I was running in my career. It was running at such a speed I would like forget names. I would just come do
my job and run and do the next thing. But in this new phase in my life, I like working with people that I genuinely like that I want to go grab a meal after with that. You know that our families can hang out and you know, go for a movie together. Like it's investing in human beings and I'm really about in this phase of my life. I think like I think my thirties or in my mid thirties or early thirties is when I started creating deeper
meaning in relationships, friendships, relationships, my family. I tried not to take people for granted, whether it was people doing their jobs, whether it was people in my family. I became aware of that and a lot more than that happened to you. Yeah, in your thirties.
Yeah, I do feel like. I feel like my twenties were about figuring out, like who am I? What you know? Who am I to the world? How does the world perceive me? And my thirties were kind of about honing it, like I had figured it out. Of course it's broke, but you know, I figured like I am a political professional, I am a lawyer, like I am a professional person.
I'm a person who takes close relationships seriously. And then I started having kids, and that's when it kind of got tested, and so I feel like it was testing it. And then I feel like the minute I turned forty. I turned forty this year. I feel like the minute I turned forty, I almost felt free.
Yeah, maybe that's what it is. Like, I'm feeling the most free I have felt in my life. I fail, the more capable of dealing with life if it's thrown at me. I feel a lot more at peace. I feel the need to choose joy. I don't care as much about people that actually don't matter in my life. I care about my job. I care about how I perform and how I deliver when I'm providing a service, which my job is, whether that's on a movie with
a brand, you know, anything. I like to be. I want to walk into my room with a professional ethic and I want people to say she was great at her job and you know, delivered as we expected. That's really important to me. But besides that and my very inner circle, which is a few friends, family, I don't give a shit, you know, Like not that I would like. I want to walk around like being you know, I don't care about people. That's not what I mean. Like,
I'm not looking for validation. I'm looking for like really tangible few things. I'm looking for joyful moments. I'm looking for career achievements. I'm looking for time with my family and my dogs and my friends. I am looking for
the next milestone I want to achieve. Like it's just become really simple my priorities and personally, I want to see who I will be as a mom, Like what does who I am like as that I've always been a single, independent woman, and then I figured out what it was like to be a patner, and so I'm
really curious to meet that version of me. I'm pretty sure who you were before your kids and who you are after was different, right, Yeah, And I've already felt that I'm just so different than what I was before. My daughter.
Brianka and her husband Nick welcomed their daughter last year via surrogate. Her daughter spent her first hundred days in the Nick you, but after coming home just before Mother's Day last year, they become inseparable.
And just seeing her happy is the greatest joy in my life. Now she's like my honing signal. Now it's like I when she giggles and she's curious and she's I love. She's such fun company. She's the funniest personality. Like I love traveling with her. Were everywhere together right now she's not in school, so and my mom is kind enough to kind of travel with me. I feel
like I've just changed. Right. Everything is about wrapping work and going home and you know, making sure I make bath time and story time, and it's like that's my day revolved. Everything else gets revolved around her schedule.
Well, actors have notoriously long hours and rigid schedules. Do you feel like that's part of your approach now? You know, if we're thinking about this intersection of the personal and the professional decision making, like is that part of your approach with Roles now to say, you know, I have to be able to make it home for bad time.
You know, if somebody wants to work with you, and I think I've reached that point, then like they make it work and I make it work. Like I remember my daughter and just come back home from the NIKU after one hundred days and I had to do some additional photography in Atlanta for a doll and Amazon Studios and Russo Brothers made it conducive where I could fly back and forth from set every weekend to see her.
And I used to fly back Friday and go back Monday, and my husband would cover the weekdays, and you know, you just kind of make it work and she comes to set. You know, it was like I don't go anywhere where my baby, my dogs and my parents are not allowed.
Something that I really think about a lot. It's like this is like a this is the thesis that I needed for this show? Is that is this dark moment that I'm in gonna propel me into something different and better that I hadn't expected and I couldn't have gotten
had I not been in this moment. Do you think there is one moment, or maybe many moments when you felt like, oh, I don't know how I'm going to get myself out of this, and now in retrospect you look back and you're like, yeah, that really set me up for the success I have now.
Yeah, I think that there are so many moments in my life where I've just been like it's like quicksand there is no out. You're just going in deeper and darker and deeper. Also, let's be honest. You know, sadness or leaning into being morose is seductive. When you're sad, you kind of kind of it's easier to just like lay in bed for twenty two hours. It takes work
to choose yourself. It takes work to talk to someone for therapy, and you know, it's hard for a lot of people, and it was hard for me, Like there have been phases lasting years for me where I just could not shake off the feeling and I didn't know if how I would see the next day. I think you have to remind yourself how much joy and joy gives, because we forget that. I think what has helped me tangibly honestly is thinking about People say you don't think
happy thoughts, but it really is. Think about what are the good things in your life? Is it that other somebody else may not have an all that is a privilege to you that you're so lucky to have. Yeah, and suddenly you're just like I can I can get up and have a coffee. Yeah, take that one step and then you take another step.
Do you think you'll pivot again?
I think so. I think change is the most constant thing in life. I think being prepared to pivot is a lot easier than trying to pivot. When you're not prepared for it, your life is going to throw a lot at you. Just pivot. Yeah, don't have to explain, Just do it. Figure out, whatever your version of it, how you survive. We know how to pivot. That's literally the one thing we do well as humans. Have to have confidence.
I love that so much, Franka, Thank you so much for joining us. It's been such such a great conversation. I really loved having you.
I love talking to you too, Love to your kids. Okay, bye bye everyone, Bye.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas lives between life in New York and filming locations with her husband Nick Jonas and their daughter, and of course her mom and their dogs go everywhere they go. If you haven't seen Citadel, you absolutely need to go watch it on Amazon. It's everything a spy show should be. And don't miss her new movie Love Again, out now in theaters featuring new music by Selene Dion.
To learn more about Prianca, you can join the other eighty seven million people who follow her on Instagram at Prianka Chopra. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots, where I talk with women about how their experiences and significant personal events led to their pivot and eventually their success. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at she pivots the podcast and leave a rating and comment if you
enjoyed this episode to help others learn about it. A special thank you to our partner Marie Claire and the team that made this episode possible. Talk to you next week. She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced by Emily eda Veloshik, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollok and research and planning from Christine Dickinson and Hannah Cousins.
I endorse Chea Pivots.