Priyanka Chopra Jonas is all set to star in her first lead role in a Hollywood feature film, Text for You, which the actor says will be “like a date-night movie that makes your heart go soft.” In an interview with Vanity Fair, the White Tiger actor talked about her upcoming projects and how with time, she has gone back to playing roles that embrace her ethnicity.
“When I first came here, to get the attention, I had to sort of shed my ethnicity a lot more so that it was not alien,” she says. “I had to play parts which were more American to get a seat at the table. Now that I’ve got a seat at the table, I’ve reverted to playing parts that embrace my ethnicity,” Chopra Jonas said in the Vanity Fair interview.
Talking about Text For You, the actor said that she had chosen the film because she herself is a “sucker for a good romantic comedy.”
She also opened up about being a producer, telling predominantly South Asian stories, especially ones which are centred on women. “I’m looking at doing very hyper-specific storytelling. I may make my mistakes because this is not a mantle I was looking for. But I think collectively, each one of us can push Hollywood and push the powers that be, and be demanding and not just polite about it,” she said.
“I’ve been polite for a very long time. Now it’s time to say, ‘I’m sorry, that doesn’t work,’ and to fight for your characters. As a producer, I’m so grateful that I get the opportunity to do that, to be able to make stories and look for stories that normalise different cultures of the world.”
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Chopra also has Citadel, a global action series franchise with spin-offs in Italy, India, Spain, and Mexico, in the works, alongside Richard Madden. As per the interview, the show has demanded several months of her time and energy, and among other things, she gets to speak six languages in it.
Apart from this, the actor is also developing Sheela for Amazon, in which she will play Ma Anand Sheela, an Indian-born Swiss woman infamous for her part in the 1984 Rajneeshee bio-terror attack in Oregon.
Chopra is also set to return to the Indian film industry with a Hindi film, a road-trip movie revolving around three women, which will co-star actors Katrina Kaif and Alia Bhatt.