Priyanka on her best role, biggest regret

She shot into limelight with the Ms World crown and hasn’t looked back since. Her journey into Bollywood was equally stupendous and with films like Aitraaz, Fashion earning her much accolade and critical acclaim. The very versatile Priyanka Chopra is going to be seen a lot more this year with soon-to-be-released Kaminey, the challenging What’s Your Rashi (where she plays 12 characters) and Pyaar Impossible (where she is a single mother). The actor speaks with Rajeev Masand on her best role, the hardest project and the hugest regret on the show To Catch A Star.

Rajeev Masand: My guest today is a leading Bollywood actresss who is enjoying a winning streak at box office with an eclectic mix of films that showcase her acting chops and allow her to have lots of fun. Put your hands together for the very talented Priyanka Chopra. Welcome to the show.

Priyanka Chopra: Thank you, Rajeev.

Rajeev Masand: You were invited to Shanghai to receive the Jin Jue award which is the highest award at the Shanghai Film Festival for your contribution to cinema.

Priyanka Chopra: Yeah, I feel like I was getting a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Rajeev Masand: So you didn’t go?

Priyanka Chopra: No, I didn’t go because I wasn’t well. I have been unwell for the last couple of months because I’ve overworked, been underpaid, you know (laughs). So it kind of contributes to my ill health.

Rajeev Masand: Underpaid! (laughs) We talk about the world becoming a smaller place but it’s really things like these – at least as far as entertainment industry is concerned – that prove it. The fact that Indian actors are getting accolades outside this country etc. As an actor who has traveled across the world, do you find that even non-Indian actors recognize Bollywood films now?

Priyanka Chopra: Definitely. I think the world’s a very small place now and our films are being taken seriously across it. Recently, you would have heard of Fashion going to Moscow Film Festival and getting huge critical acclaim. Which was great! It feels fantastic that Indian films are going abroad and getting the response that they are.

Rajeev Masand: While on the subject of your film Fashion, it’s the film for which you got a series of awards. It’s been a great season for you isn’t it? Do you feel Fashion is your best performance then?

Priyanka Chopra: Hmm, I have a few films coming up…Fashion has been a very difficult performance. Till that point in my career that is and after Aitraaz. I was 21 when I did Aitraaz. A film like that required so much maturity and for me, that’s my best performance. I didn’t know what I was doing and I did it with complete honesty. I was totally naïve when I did Aitraaz . At 21, to play a character like that – I was only listening to my directors then. Fashion was a little more thought of. I had a lot to do with it, Madhur (Bhandarkar, the director) spoke a lot about it.

We did a lot with Meghna Mathur. So till that point definitely it was one of my best performances. It was one of the parts that gave me the opportunity to do that. you can be true to the smallest film you do and if they don’t do well, you don’t get noticed. Nothing speaks like success. So I feel, yes, Fashion was one of the films where I have done well but yes, I have also tried to out-do it with my next films. That’s always been my endeavor.

Rajeev Masand: Awards can be – I am sure you experienced it recently – a little prickly issue. There are always people divided over jury’s decision. You noticed it recently in Macau with Ashutosh Gowariker and Jaya Bachchan. Did it hurt?

Priyanka Chopra: Actually it didn’t because it was a joke. That’s how I saw it. And if you saw the clipping, you’ll see I was laughing through it. I spoke to Ashutosh’s wife and said, ‘Can I kill him now?’ It was a joke and he was just messing around. We are working in What’s Your Rashi? together. And that’s been the most difficult performance of my life and he has mentioned to me as the most difficult film of his life. I know how we have worked for it. Ashu is someone I tremendously respect. I know he said it as a joke. I prefer not to believe the way people are talking about it because I would give him the benefit of doubt.

Rajeev Masand: What about Jaya Bachchan’s comments? She said that she felt Aishwarya’s was a fine performance in Jodha Akbar. What she also said – which I found a little odd – was that she hadn’t seen Fashion.

Priyanka Chopra: Well, people say what they have to and am sure Jaya ji had a reason to say what she did. It didn’t matter to me because I give her a lot of respect for being a senior actor and the woman that she is. Whatever her reason for saying whatever she did must have been probably right from what she thinks. People can have opinions, I am just grateful that I won all the awards this season and that’s what speaks the most for me.

Rajeev Masand: In your next film, Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey, you play what you describe as a middle-class Maharashtrian girl. That’s a far cry from who you really are. How did you prepare?

Priyanka Chopra: I was a middle-class Punjabi girl! I just had to change my region of being brought up. But man! Marathi is such a difficult language, especially for a Punjabi. So yeah, it killed me. It’s not entirely Marathi, I am not constantly speaking in Marathi. But because she has been brought up as a Maharashtrian character, she will says little things like shee baba and all that. It’s the little things that make you a Maharashtrian character and that’s what I wanted. It’s very subtly done.

Vishal and I sat down a lot to figure that part of it out. Because it’s a Hindi film eventually, you’ve to speak in Hindi. And it’s about how you still bring across the character. Sometimes she just slips it in. Say, she’s speaking to her brother in Marathi and then looks at Shahid’s character and speaks in Hindi.

It’s an amalgamation of Hindi and Marathi – which I have noticed with a lot of college-going girls. In fact my coach – I really wanted a dialect coach for this film – she was like my spine in this film, Aarti. She was there with me throughout. She and I worked a lot on how to go about the college scenes – she is 21 and a college girl herself. It’s a college romance between two of them (Shahid and Priyanka’s characters) – something that just happens to become serious. It goes out of their hands. It’s a sweet chapter in the film.

Rajeev Masand: From what we’ve seen of the promos, it looks like you are a nagging, whiny kind of a girl. Is that correct?

Priyanka Chopra: No! On the contrary, she is a feisty girl. You know how all Maharashtrian women are – they are feisty, vibrant and colourful. They know how to get they want done and that’s how she is and yet she does it with a clean heart. She stands up for what she wants, she’ll get it done and will kick you if you try and stand up for something else. But that’s what she is – a lot of things in one.

Rajeev Masand: You’re also doing Ashutosh Gowariker’s What’s Your Rashi, which you recently wrapped. It’s a film in which you famously play 12 characters. As a critic, sometimes you see that actors have such a hard time delivering one consistent character in a film. What’s it like keeping track of 12 of them?

Priyanka Chopra: I turned schizophrenic by the end of the film. I worked on that film and only that film for six months. I don’t know what the fate of the film would be but I know I’ve given my blood and soul to that. It’s been my hardest endeavor in my life. And I don’t think I will ever say that again.

I am hugely grateful that I was picked to play this part. Ashu always tells me I am a 100 people in my brain and which is why it was so easy for me to create them but it was so difficult to be consistent to each girl. The greatest challenge was that we never shot all of them together. We shot say the first scene and then the 25th scene, which may have been another girl and then the 31st scene and so on. It was a joke. We used to call the crossword. Then to keep consistency in a film that was sync sound…one had to keep the voice quality the same.

I have tried to do different voices for different girls because I wanted my own voice and not anyone dubbing it. So they were very subtle changes. I didn’t have any crutches – I had no prosthetics, no stuttering-stammering, none of that. The only differences were accents, hair and makeup and the only thing that was different about all the girls was the body language.

Rajeev Masand: I read reports that you fainted out of exhaustion on the sets of that film. So is he a tough taskmaster or are you just a delicate darling?

Priyanka Chopra: Neither. Ashu is not a tough taskmaster and he really pampers us, especially me because of the delicate nature of the film. I was always given my time. I used to be on the tenterhooks on the sets because I had to deliver so much. I had to remember every nuance of every character I had kept. So I was really pampered on that set. But I think it was just sheer stress plus I had eaten something wrong plus I had been working nonstop – it was just everything.

Rajeev Masand: Let me ask you a tricky one and I don’t want you to dodge it…

Priyanka Chopra: .. .you know me, I can dodge anything. (laughs)

Rajeev Masand: You know, friends can be lovers but can lovers be friends? Was it difficult mustering up romantic chemistry with Harman after the break-up?

Priyanka Chopra: All I’ll say is that Harman has been one of my best costars. Specially in a film like Rashi I needed someone to be hugely supportive and he always was. We had a great time shooting the film…

Rajeev Masand:… this was before you two decided to go your personal ways?

Priyanka Chopra: Nothing that happens in my personal life ever affects my work. And I am sure it was the same for him.

Rajeev Masand: The tabloids say Shahid Kapoor is the new man in your life.

Priyanka Chopra: The tabloids say a lot of things. When I feel like I need to talk about someone being a part of my life, I will.

Rajeev Masand: In Pyaar Impossible, you play a single mother who’s the centre of a nerd’s attention.

Priyanka Chopra: Okay, now Pyaar Impossible is about this geek who has always – since college – been in love with this girl. And she doesn’t even know he exists because she is a great-looking, normal popular girl, she does her things. He is the invisible man, watching her and simply adores her.

Rajeev Masand: That’s a character I am sure you could identify with. I am sure there are…

Priyanka Chopra: … I have never had people coming and telling me that. Ever. So I didn’t identify with it. So, she doesn’t know he exists. And then there’s a gap where they go their ways. And then they end up meeting after six-seven years. She got married when she was 18, has a kid now - when she’s herself a child because everything got thrown at her - her dad got her married early, she happened to have a kid, she happened to get divorced because the guy was a jerk and so now she has a life which she needs to handle. And how this guy comes into her life all over again.

Rajeev Masand: We’ve been reading there’ll be a Dostana 2. Are you going to miss out on all the fun. You went away with Bobby in the first one.

Priyanka Chopra: Yeah I did! It won’t be as much fun without me. 100 per cent!

Rajeev Masand: I am sure! Don 2, however, you are coming back with.

Priyanka Chopra: Yeah, and I am going to kick some serious booty in that film. Let’s just say that.

Rajeev Masand: How do you raise the ante, really?

Priyanka Chopra: Obviously, if you have a sequel, the agenda is still on. The script is really interesting. It’ll be a taking forward from Don 1 and the characters will be the same. But the story will keep dodging you as audience. You’ll constantly have to keep guessing as to what is happening and the pace is quick.

Rajeev Masand: So more physical training, I guess.

Priyanka Chopra: I am pretty sure.

Rajeev Masand: I notice you are a regular on Twitter – the social networking site.

Priyanka Chopra: Recently.

Rajeev Masand: I also notice you also use it as a way to stay connected with your fans directly. Tell me how often you update your status.

Priyanka Chopra: Everyday. Because it’s on my phone. And whenever I am driving – especially early morning with a cup of coffee when you have nothing to do, and you feel nostalgic – that’s the time I update it. And I read all my fans’ comments and reply to them whichever ones I can because there are so many. I am working on a website which will be extremely interactive again. It’ll have a lot of videos of me doing my things. That’s how – if I were a fan of a celebrity – I would like to touch them. So I like doing that and it’s one of my favourite pastimes.

Rajeev Masand: You also write a column for a city supplement and it’s again very popular. In fact, I notice one of the most popular topics is the battle of the sexes. You’ve written about it a lot. So do you also face a writer’s block?

Priyanka Chopra: Inevitably, I am writing Thursday night. And inevitably they call to tell me it’s got to go to print, please send. And then I keep saying, oh my God! I need to change stuff. I go insane every Friday. It’s like a film releasing every Friday. But I do get writer’s block and then start thinking about what I must write – rains, recession, MJ – things that matter to me, what I feel like writing about.

Rajeev Masand: Since you mentioned MJ, he was really the reason you got initiated into music apparently?

Priyanka Chopra: Pop music, yes. Music was a huge part of our growing up lives. My father is a huge fan of music. So we woke up in the morning with Mohd Rafi everyday. I was really young when MJ was big. In eighties, I must have been six or seven. So when he was massive with Dangerous etc, I was very young to know it. But by the time I was a teen, all the boys would only be doing MJ. I was like, what’s that! So I got initiated into English music because of him. Dance moves, what he used to do – everything about him was a phenomenon. I found that very fascinating. What upset me most was he went the way he did. I wish his comeback tour had happened. I wish people would remember him for his goodness. Batman, James Bond never die. So MJ never dies, and that’s why people were so shocked. Now, the man has gone but he has left us with a generation of fantastic music. He has changed pop culture. Even a rickshawallah knows who Michael Jackson was – he was that massive. Let’s give him the respect of that, rather than controversy that surrounded him and the loneliness in which he passed. Let’s give him the peace in his death that we couldn’t give him in his life.

Rajeev Masand: And finally, if you could back in time, what would you redo? Or change about your life?

Priyanka Chopra: The only regret I have is not finishing college. I give education a lot of importance, especially for a girl. I feel you have to be able to be financially independent. By God’s grace, I feel I have reached a point where I have become financially independent without college. I am one of God’s blessed children. It does not happen to everyone. Girls need to be standing on their feet rather than standing on someone else’s. Become independent, it will give you such a sense of power. Just having a degree makes you feel you have something to fall back on. That’s my hugest regret.

Rajeev Masand: Best of luck, looking forward to seeing a lot of work from you.

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