she s an actress, a producer and a businesswoman. she came into the spotlight after winning the miss world pageant in the year 2000, went on to to become a successful bollywood star. now, she s perhaps the only person from india to have made a real space for themselves in the entertainment industry in the west. she s one of the bbc s 100 women this year. hi! and we re going to talk to her about her career and activism. priyanka chopra jonas, thanks very much for speaking to the bbc. you re obviously a successful star in two countries on two continents, but when you were growing up, that was a very different world. when people asked you what you want to be, what did you say? and at what point did you feel that the canvas could be as big as this? no, i never thought the canvas could be as big as this.
are a little bit afraid that they lose work if they are troublesome. that s something that s another thought process that exists in, i think, notjust bollywood, but, you know, in any patriarchal culture that, you know, girls should just be easy to work with, always be smiling, pleasant, they should never complain, and i was. i behaved like that for a very long time till i kind of found my own footing and i was kind of ok with doing smaller movies that i shouldered on my own shoulders and not having to cater or pander to, you know, the male actors or their needs and whatever, their diva behaviour, and then i kind of found my own voice and said, you know what? it s ok to do a smaller film rather than stand for that kind of treatment. so i don t know how much it is changing, but girls have definitely asked and not got it.
so to speak, in bollywood, but it wasn t immediate acceptance oi’ success. you know, it s an industry in which, even today, i would say, to a large extent, the notion of beauty has got to do with, you know, the colour of your skin, a certain body shape. were you, did you ever feel like you were body shamed? 0h, absolutely. i was called black, dusky. what does even dusky mean? in a country of all dusky people, i mean, we are literally brown in india! but we still have so much equity on light skin, and of course that comes from our colonial past, it comes from, you know. it s not even been 100 years that we ve shed the british raj. so we still hold onto, i think, what we were made to feel subliminally, and it is up to us and our generation to be able to cut those ties and change it for the next generation so that they don t inherit the equity on light skin, they don t inherit
to the us, you were a huge bollywood star here, known, loved, adored, and then you went to this country trying to break into an industry there and you ve written about how there were rooms where you didn t know anyone, where there were parties where you were not part of the a list set, where you were in the other section. what was that experience like? humbling. laughs. the one thing about being an actor in bollywood is female or males the men enjoy a lot more of it, but women do too. you re kind of told or made to feel like there s nothing greater than you when you walk into a room, and that comes from the immense love that the indian people have for hindi movies. the audience loves hindi movies and they love the stars that are in them. so when you become a hindi movie actor, you kind of feel like it s
how how different was it? like, i would get paid about.10% of my male co actor. wow. that s large, substantially large. and so many girls still deal with that. and i m sure i will too if i worked with a male co actor now in bollywood. so, that was my next question has it changed at all or is it changing? it s changing, but i don t think it s changed. i think even if i do that now, if i worked in a movie with a main co actor as a co lead i mean, i ll let you know when i do a movie like that because i m going to do that as a social experiment! but i don t think i would get the same remuneration as a male co actor. and is hollywood any different? well, it s the first time it s happened to me, has happened in hollywood, so i don t know going forward, because this was my first show with someone as a co lead in hollywood after ten years of working in hollywood, i m finally doing lead parts.