Shooting for the American television series Quantico was stopped for two days earlier this week in Montreal. Priyanka Chopra, who plays a sassy, gun-toting federal agent in the show, needed to go home. The President of India was to confer the Padma Shri on her at a ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhawan, and Chopra was not going to miss that.
"They stopped the shooting so that I could come to India," Priyanka Chopra says. She had also rescheduled the shooting of her Hollywood film Baywatch, where she stars with Dwayne Johnson. Shot in Miami, the film is the big-screen version of the popular 1990s television series about California lifeguards.
Chopra plays a villain in the film, a role originally written for a male character but re-written for her. Baywatch will be released in May next year. In Quantico, Chopra is the main suspect in a terror plot that rocks the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The series, which returned in March after a three-month hiatus, has been trending on social media in several countries including the US and Saudi Arabia.
The laurels don't stop there. In January, she won the "favourite actress in a new TV series" award at the 42nd People's Choice Awards, voted for by the public of California. The first season of Quantico was extended by nine episodes, it has been dubbed in 44 languages, and a second season has been commissioned. Last week, it was announced that Chopra has been invited to the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner with the Obamas. Chopra doesn't know if she can make it, given her tight shooting schedules.
Fifteen years ago, who would have thought Priyanka Chopra would outshine her contemporaries so dramatically? "Nobody expected her to receive such international fame," trade analyst Komal Nahata stresses. "She entered the industry without a film background, didn't belong to any coterie and yet became a superstar," he says.
So far Chopra's life is moving to a script that can't go wrong. Her Instagram bio reads "nowhere to go but everywhere to be". Just what does that mean?
"That's because I never had any ambition in my life," she replies. "I have always worked very hard at the opportunities that have come my way. But I want to be good at what I am doing. I am an achiever."
That she is an achiever is something that industry watchers second. But not everybody believes her success is unplanned.
"She is playing her career like chess," says journalist and author Sathya Saran. "She is making all the smart moves."
Chopra was a 17-year-old contestant in the Miss India beauty pageant when Saran first met her. "She had a great voice and was supremely confident," Saran recalls. "I remember one particular air journey where we travelled together after she had won the title. She chatted with me the entire trip telling me how she had offers from films, political parties and modelling agencies. I advised her to join politics as she could be an intelligent and articulate politician," Saran says.
But Chopra - Piggy Chops to friends (she is an avowed foodie) and PeeCee to the media - seemingly had other plans: a life beyond Bollywood. "She is a thorough professional who does her homework before coming to the sets. She deserves every bit of the recognition she is getting now," Rahul Bose, her co-star in Dil Dhadakne Do, states.
Indeed, the year has been good for her. She was one of the presenters at the 88th Annual Academy Awards, where she gave away the Oscar for best editing. She has featured in several talk shows, including the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Her dubbing for the Hindi version of Disney's The Jungle Book, released in India last week, has been widely appreciated (some critics thought she was better than Scarlett Johansson as Kaa). Her production house, Purple Pebble Pictures, has started work on Punjabi, Bhojpuri and Marathi films.
Of course, it doesn't mean that her Bollywood career is over. "I haven't bid adieu to Bollywood," she laughs. "By next week I will sign a Hindi film."
In her 15-year-long career, Chopra has acted in some 55 films after marking her debut with the Tamil film Thamizan. She has been widely applauded for her roles - from that of a sexual predator (Aitraaz) and feisty girl ( Kaminey) to husband killer (7 Khoon Maaf), autistic girl ( Barfi!) and boxer (Mary Kom). Two of the biggest hits of last year were Chopra-starrers - Dil Dhadakne Do and Bajirao Mastani. For her producers, Chopra is a bankable star who can carry a movie on her shoulders.
"I couldn't imagine anyone other than Priyanka as Abha Mathur," says Prakash Jha, director of Jai Gangaajal, released in March. Chopra played the lead - a cop in small-town Bihar. "She is confident and aggressive. On screen she looks the character and not a star," Jha says.
Directors swear by her dedication. Omung Kumar, who directed Mary Kom, says he wanted a toned body for the role of the real-life, medal-winning boxer, and was appalled when Chopra told him she didn't gym. "She promised me she would deliver the look of a boxer," he says, recalling how she followed a gruelling physical training schedule for over two months.
Her admirers in Mumbai point out that Chopra doesn't rest on her laurels. So it's not surprising that after making her mark in Bollywood, she has been reaching out to the West.
The 33-year-old crossed the borders with a pop album, In My City, which also featured the American singer, will.i.am. It won three nominations at the World Music Awards in 2012 and was the theme song for the 2013 season of the US National Football League. She released Exotic with rapper Pitbull in 2013, and, in 2014, her version of I Can't Make You Love Me.
The move from English music to American television was not unexpected.
"I thought she had an international flair," says Los Angeles-based angel investor Anjula Acharia-Bath, who stresses that it was she who first thought of giving Chopra an international platform. "Priyanka caught my attention many years ago when she did a hip hop spoof with Abhishek Bachchan in Bluffmaster!. A few years later a demo tape came to me from musicians Salim and Sulaiman and I realised that she was multi-talented," Acharia-Bath recounts.
In 2010, she convinced Chopra to team up with her. "She was very hard to pin down as she was incredibly busy. When I finally got to her, I asked her to commit to spending some time with us in the studio to see what our team could create." It helped that her partner Jimmy Iovine had worked with some top stars including Lady Gaga and Eminem, "So he was definitely my trump card in convincing her," says Acharia-Bath, who is now Chopra's international manager.
Chopra's endorsements run deep. According to a 2015 celebrity valuation report prepared by Duff & Phelps, a global valuation firm, she was pegged as the most valuable celebrity brand in India with current endorsement fees ranging from Rs 4 crore to Rs 7 crore per deal. She fetches Rs 7-8 crore per film. Last year, there were reports that an international travel firm had approached Chopra with a Rs 10-crore offer.
In 2010, she made her television debut as a host for the third season of the reality showFear Factor: Khatron ke Khiladi and got paid Rs 50 lakh per episode. She reportedly charged Rs 1.5 crore for a four-minute dance performance at an award function last year.
In 2014, she became the first Indian to be chosen as a model for Guess, the popular American clothing brand. "She is suited for brands with an international appeal," says Manish Porwal, managing director, Alchemist Marketing & Talent Solutions, Mumbai.
Chopra's graph is the quintessential small-town-girl-makes-it-big story. Born in Jamshedpur, she spent her childhood moving with her parents, both doctors in the army. At 13, she went to the US. She stayed with an aunt and studied in an American school for four years. She returned to Bareilly, where her parents lived, when she was 17. That was when her mother sent her photographs for the Miss India contest. She won the crown, and subsequently became Miss World in 2000.
"It's not easy to become a global icon from the kind of upbringing all of us have had," says her younger cousin, actor Parineeti Chopra. "She is a family-oriented and secure person."
Chopra has had her share of link-ups with co-actors but she has never openly admitted to any relationship. "You won't see the real me very often. There's a side of me who is just a girl and only people who are really close to me get to see that side," she says "But it's not that you see a fake me," she hastens to add.
She is active on Twitter (13.1 million followers) and Instagram (5.8 million followers), platforms where she posts pictures from her shoots and other mundane musings regularly. She rarely forgets to wish her co-stars on their birthdays or praise their achievements. She speaks her mind. On the "intolerance" debate she was quoted as saying, "We are living in a democracy, so if you can have an opinion then let me have one."
Madhur Bhandarkar, who directed her in Fashion, which won Chopra a National Award, calls her "straightforward". He relates how he bumped into her in a Goa hotel and narrated the outline of Fashion to her. "'So now you are going to target the fashion industry,' Chopra had said. I was taken aback by her frankness," Bhandarkar says. The film was one of the biggest hits of 2008 and came after a string of flops for Chopra.
So what next? Will Chopra continue with music, television or cinema - or with all?
"I am a multi-hyphenated person," she replies. This year things have been moving really fast. And we are only in April," she smiles.
The Telegraph Calcutta