Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas : 'Life Flashed In Front Of Me' When Nick Jonas Proposed
How emotional or cathartic was it for you to write this? You know i’ve been telling everyone that it was very healing and very cathartic, but now that people are starting to read it and are texting me about it and you know online on social i’m like oh, my gosh priyanka spoke about this, and this is which i’m Suddenly, like like yeah, i don’t want to talk to anybody about it anymore. Now so you’re feeling pretty vulnerable right now, that’s a good thing. I didn’t, i don’t, know why. I didn’t realize that when i was reading the book 500 times, but now that everyone else is reading it, it feels like you know, um. I chose to really rip off that curtain didn’t i i did but it’s so beautifully done and it’s that type of vulnerability that allows other people to get comfortable with the things about themselves or ourselves that maybe otherwise we wouldn’t talk about. So i love that you were that open. Thank you so much it wasn’t. You know it’s, not the easiest thing to do, especially when you know you’ve trained yourself, your whole life to try and be absolutely the opposite, which is private and not really um. You know discuss so much of your life and wear like an exterior of steel. Suddenly to do the other things to be vulnerable took a little while i, it was almost two years of not being able to write at all.
Oh really, you had writers black. Well, i don’t even know if it was a block. I don’t think i could get started well. You are busy, so you had a lot of sets that you needed so it’s understandable, but i predominantly wrote it when i was home um for those six months during quarantine, and that gave me the time instead of being on. You know on a plane and trying to figure it out. At that time i was home i felt rooted. I felt secure comfortable um and i just it was very healing honestly that’s great here. I want to um start with your career and kind of the springboard. The catalyst to all of this you talk about your ten year old brother, submitting you for a beauty pageant which kind of was the start of it all uh break that down for our viewers. What was that moment when your brother was like? You know what you’re going to go be a beauty queen. Well it wasn’t as sweet as that. Never are especially little brothers, but i had just moved back to india after high school in the us, and unfortunately, high school in the us does not prepare you for education around the world. So i arrived in 12th grade and i felt like i was failing everything and i i was like. Oh my gosh, these exams, i can’t, keep up um, but what had happened when i came back to my parents, house was my brother got kicked out of his room because he was 10 year old boy and i was 16 year old girl.
So my dad said: well, she gets the room, i didn’t argue of course, and he was really mad and we used to watch the miss india pageant. You know like watch the pageants and we i used to love them just watching them and he had taken some. You know head shots, those mall shots. You know soft focus. I take some of those yeah with my hand here and stuff. He comes to my mom and says you know if we send her her pictures into this pageant, then she’s gon na have to move to mumbai. That would be great, so that was his plan to get me to move to mumbai. So he gets his room back and you know what he did eventually is he? Is he just as strategic these days? I don’t think so he was so simple. He is such a simple person said my brother, but he’s, just like i don’t know what that was. I think it was also innocence and smarts yeah. Well, it certainly paid off and his gut was right whether it was for one reason or another, because here you are this global superstar um what’s, most fascinating is the fact that you were cleaning up in these pageants. I mean just winning titles and taking names um without any experience before you decided to get into it. What was the secret to winning so many pageants uh before you had that experience? I think the trick really was being confident.
You know i wasn’t the prettiest girl in the room or the tallest, or you know the best looking or whatever, but i think i walked into a room with a sense of confidence and i could have a conversation with someone with you know like. I knew what i was talking about, even if i wasn’t i was like a duck. You know super elegant and and quiet and well poised up top, but like paddling away um at the bottom, and i think that really helped me stand out, and that was something my parents taught me since i was a child, i was never treated like a kid. I was always given credence for my intelligence. I was told to have opinions. You know they would ask me in conversations when we were hanging out with their friends like what do you think about that you know so, when you’re raised with a sense of self you grow into being an adult who has a sense of self? Yes, i love that uh, we love the book, particularly because you’re so open because you’re so vulnerable. You talk about the fact that almost 20 years ago you removed a polyp and i’m curious to know. Were you hesitant to talk about that? Were you just like you know what it is, what it is and i’m going to share my story? You know. Yes, the answer to that is very much so um it’s still something that you know i’m, not very comfortable talking about, because it takes me back into a time where i felt very vulnerable um and which is why i talked about it in the book and left It at that, oh yeah, it works of course, of course, um also there’s, a director.
You have a story where you talk about a director, essentially telling you to change your body, which is absolutely ridiculous, and particularly in the last few years, we’ve we’ve had these conversations in hollywood about this sort of behavior and about the things that women go through in This industry um: where did you find that strength? Maybe it is that confidence? You spoke about from early age, uh to say basically screw you. I don’t think i said screw you, you know figuratively, but no honestly, i wish i had honestly. I wish i had stood up and said screw you at that time, but this is 20 years ago, and it was so normalized that you know women have to look a certain way and if you only put into the mold, if you’re you know, super young, even Though the actors are super old, they still want to work with the 20 year olds or whatever. You know, like all of that pressure and even the pressures of beauty were so normalized that at that time i didn’t have the courage to even know that that was something that made me feel devalued, and it only took many years of experience and you know being Able to stand on my own feet to be able to look back and say i wish you had said screw you you know, but i walked out of that office. My hands shaking and feeling like i don’t, even know. If i should be giving this a shot.
You know yeah it’s beautiful, to see where you’ve come then, and i think it’s that exact transparency and vulnerability and being like. I wish i’d said that and i didn’t to see that woman and where you are now, i think so. Many women particularly will find inspiration in that so it’s great that you shared it it’s really. Thank you so much dude. That means a lot of course um. I got ta ask about nick. We talked to him just yesterday. Okay, so i got ta get a direct quote to me. Yesterday. He was like, i think, we’re doing a lot of the same press right, yeah yeah, you guys, might be doing the same for us to her because uh he said we asked him about the proposal and he told us that you waited 45 seconds to respond and Then he says it was tough and he eventually had to say i’m just going to put this on your finger, and then you tell me after if it’s a no but i’m tired of waiting, can you confirm what were you thinking in those 45 seconds? He claims it’s 45 seconds by the way my life flashed in front of me. I wasn’t expecting this at all. This was two months from our first date. Um i mean i knew we were gon na go in that direction. I just it just took me by surprise completely. He claims like i said it was 45 seconds.
I don’t think it was that long, okay um, but but he did do that. You know there’s one thing to know about my husband when he wants something he’s. He gets it and he’s an extremely um he’s, not someone who waits around he’s, very self, assured and confident about it. So he was on his knee and he just put the ring on my finger sat down next to me and said: is it a no and i was like? No? Yes like i was like wait. No, nobody know brian say yes, yes, okay also that ends well. He got the yes, we got the amazing wedding um, i loved, watching you guys’s celebrations, all of the beautiful cultural photos you shared, and just this beautiful, combining of two worlds: two lives: two families um nick talked about the fact that he loved the festive hindu wedding Celebrations and traditions. What can you tell us about one of the most special cultural traditions that you had in the wedding there’s, one where um that there’s tumeric paste that the family paints onto the bride and groom yeah um that’s called the haldi, and this is um. Basically, you know hindu culture is so ancient and comes from so many years old. So this is symbolic of the beautification of the bride and the groom, for you know the culmination of their marriage and uh. So it comes from that symbolic. Every ritual in hindu wedding is usually for the families to get to know each other, and this is a way of sort of everyone in the family to get to know um the groom and the bride, so it’s, really beautiful and uh, usually with the with the Guy, it gets a little handsy because it’s all the women that get to put the healthy on his face and his chest, and you know usually they tear off what he’s wearing and it was really funny to see all the women in nick’s families especially go in And go in hard just getting in there.
I love it. I love it before i let you go. I want to do a little life flashback with some of the photos that you feature in your memoir. The first one is a photo we’ll pull up here. We’Ve got ralph, lauren and priyanka doing their things. I mean talk us through this photo. He obviously designed your gown. It was absolutely epic um. Did he fulfill your dreams? I think it’s safe to say of that dream. Gown um. Definitely you see andrea as well and um and ralph warren himself, and it was really wonderful to actually walk in that room and see them and see how invested they were in in you know, my perfect dress and what i wanted and wanted to make it as Custom and special, as i wanted it to be, so i had embroidered words within the embroidery of my dress and it was very, very um, special and that’s. All they wanted was, you know, what’s the dress. You want and it’s only the fourth dress. I think ralph lauren has ever designed he doesn’t do weddings and the first one outside of his family. So i was very honored. Stunning we’ve got a photo of nick getting that shirt ripped off having the time of his life. You already know you should ask him. Was he really oh that’s stupid? Was he like what is actually happening, or was he just like? You know what i had prepared him for everything? You know.
I know his family and i know my family and i know that they’re gon na go in so you know we knew who our surrounding was, because it was a hundred most important people in our lives. So i had prepared him for what to expect with the indian wedding. He had prepared me for what to expect with the western weddings um. We had made little books called dummies for indian wedding, weddings for dummies and western weddings for dummies and kept it in all the rooms. So whoever didn’t understand whatever had a guideline. It was really fun. I love that we have this photo that you put into the book of you younger in a sparkly blue dress, serving looks and angles. Where is this from set the theme for this photo? This was my first modeling job uh. This is me at i think 16, and there was a local importer where he used to import like all these um sparkly dresses – and you know, saw me at um some in the country club that my parents and i yes family, used to go to and said. Would you like to come and model these gowns, and you know i did my own hair, my own makeup, um wore these gowns stood against a curtain and took these pictures. That was my first paycheck for getting model for modeling you’re getting paid at 16 for it not many people can say that right now i didn’t look like that at 16.
me – and my makeup is like orange up here and then like, but if you look closely You can see me like. The contours are uh. This is the last one, your beautiful mother, looking stunning in that powder, blue walking you down the aisle. What did it mean to you to have your mom? Give you away um. It was a moment where we both missed my dad very much, and we came together in our grief to commemorate him and his life and the fact that this would have been um such an exciting day for him. Um. My dad would have been the life of the party and that’s all we kept talking about when um we were walking down and i’m so glad she agreed to do that, because my mom was usually very traditional um as modern as her outlook might be, and she It was she cried a lot when i asked her to walk me down the aisle, but it was a very powerful moment and both of us transferring strength onto each other in a moment where it was very special. Well, you both look absolutely stunning uh. What do you hope people take away after reading unfinished? What will the readers be understanding, maybe about priyanka, that they didn’t um, hopefully get to know me a little bit more as a person um, you know, and instead of just a you know, gossip tidbit or something uh and second also um, it’s hard being a woman In this industry this is not an easy place to be in, and i was thrown in here at a very vulnerable time, and all i did was try to keep my head above water and when i look back now, 20 years later, it seems like.
I came. A long way – and i built that career on my back and i feel proud of it, because i have no idea what this was all about and if i can do that, anyone can do that hard work would lead you to your dreams, even though this wasn’t, My dream that the hard work would lead you to wherever your brother’s dream is my brother’s name. They could get his room back. I love it. Well, you are absolutely a self made woman and i respect that so much cheering you on always and congratulations on the new memoir.
Comments
Post a Comment