Priyanka Chopra on Nick Jonas Marriage, The Bluff and ‘Varanasi’

Priyanka Chopra Jonas winces — only slightly, but unmistakably — when the word “crossover” enters the conversation. It’s a frigid January afternoon in Manhattan, but the Hudson River gusts can’t penetrate the interior of the Upper West Side high-rise apartment she shares with husband Nick Jonas and their 4-year-old daughter, Malti. It’s warm and cozy inside the dimly lit room, with plush velvet walls and a poker table at the ready in case anyone is feeling lucky. Even so, Chopra Jonas keeps a black wool overcoat draped across her lap.

Chopra Jonas has been chronicling her unlikely trajectory from highest-paid actress in India to Hollywood action heroine; somewhere in between, she tried to launch a pop music career. “For a hot minute — and then quickly realized I should go back to acting,” she says with a self-deprecating laugh. It’s easy-breezy, but then the C-word hits like an arctic blast.

“I have a tumultuous relationship with that word,” she says, searching for why it bothers her. “I haven’t figured it out yet. It almost sounds like where you were wasn’t good enough — and that’s never how it felt to me.”

So don’t call it a crossover — but here she is. Chopra Jonas is the only proven star who meaningfully straddles two movie-business behemoths — Hollywood and Bollywood — not as a novelty, not as a guest, but as a sustained, bankable presence in both. The former Miss World cemented her stateside fame with three seasons of the ABC thriller “Quantico” as well as turns in “The Matrix Resurrections” and the Oscar-nominated “The White Tiger,” which she executive produced. Her ascent coincides with a shifting economic landscape, with new superpowers emerging. India is now the fastest-growing global market for streaming, a talent engine Hollywood is only beginning to understand. Chopra Jonas is no longer an exception. She’s a preview.

Her latest film, Frank E. Flowers’ “The Bluff,” places her front and center as a ferocious, sword-wielding mother fighting to protect her son in the late-19th-century Caribbean — a physical, punishing role that might be otherwise overlooked by Hollywood’s theatrical-focused press corps. After all, it’s a streaming-only play for Amazon and won’t generate box office receipts that can be trumpeted following its Feb. 25 release. But movies like “The Bluff” quietly drive subscriptions on platforms like Prime and Netflix. In fact, the AGBO-produced project originated at Netflix, with Zoe Saldaña slated to star, before Chopra Jonas replaced her and Amazon MGM Studios acquired distribution rights. (Saldaña remains an executive producer on the film.)

Following the “Bluff ” launch comes Season 2 of Amazon’s “Citadel.” Led by Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden and also produced by the Russo brothers’ AGBO, the mega-budget spy series — $300 million for Season 1! — became the streamer’s second-most-watched new original show outside the U.S., an increasingly relevant data point, and its fourth-most-watched worldwide.

Over the past few years, Amazon has solidified its relationship with Chopra Jonas, collaborating with her on last year’s action thriller “Heads of State” opposite John Cena and Idris Elba. Her team ran an AI analysis on who was responsible for the film’s hit status, and it corresponded with Amazon’s internal data. Chopra Jonas sparked twice as much buzz as her titular co-stars based on volume, headlines and quoting intensity. Little wonder why: India boasts more than 250 million people who stream video each month, making it a top-three priority market for the studio.

All that helps explain why Amazon is so bullish on the Jamshedpur-born actress — so much so that rumors continue to swirl that she will land somewhere in “Bond 26,” the tech giant’s first foray into the 007 franchise.

“It could be truly global now, yeah, a change of hands,” she says. “I’d be really curious to see what lane they pick.”

Outside Amazon (and Hollywood), she will star in “Varanasi,” S.S. Rajamouli’s follow-up to the smash hit “RRR.” The November release of a first-look image of Chopra Jonas from the film — whose $150 million budget makes it the most expensive Indian movie ever made — nearly broke the internet (here, there and everywhere). But at least part of her origin story is squarely here. She attended the same Massachusetts high school as Matt LeBlanc and Joe Rogan, married a New Jersey-reared pop star and upended the must-be-blonde mandate to play the female lead in Paramount’s 2017 film “Baywatch.” Naturally, it would be easy to dub her the ultimate cross …, er, bridge?

“She seems so fully formed in each of the two expressions. It’s like she fully exists in both Hollywood and the Indian movie industry,” says AGBO’s Anthony Russo. “Maybe early on when she was doing her first work outside of India, the idea of crossover could be more useful with her. But I think now it doesn’t resonate just because she seems complete in both places.”

For Chopra Jonas, who has reached the apex of a doubleheaded mountain at the age of 43, it was never about crossing over. It was about claiming her space.

“It took many years to be sitting where I am right now, a lot of pavement-pounding,” she says. “I am in a position now where I get to pick the things that I want to make. I understand the privilege of that very much, and I take it very seriously.”

Chopra Jonas’ fluency across worlds is rooted in motion. Her parents were both doctors in the Indian military, which meant constant relocation and early independence. Home was wherever Mom or Dad’s next posting happened to be. Structure mattered.

“Discipline was a really big part of our growing up,” she says of her early years as the elder of two children. “Your word is your bond. If you say something, you have to stand for it.”

She never planned to go into acting. She won the Miss World pageant in 2000 almost accidentally — “pageant girl” is still a phrase she says with amusement rather than pride. “Someday, I gotta talk to Gal Gadot about that,” she says playfully of the former Miss Universe contestant. But the winning sash opened doors Chopra Jonas hadn’t imagined walking through. Film roles quickly followed, beginning with 2002 action drama “Thamizhan.” Success turned into dominance, with Chopra Jonas becoming one of the most celebrated Indian actresses of her generation for such movies as “Krrish 3,” “Bajirao Mastani” and “Agneepath.” Along the way, she racked up trophies, including two National Film Awards (India’s equivalent of the Oscars) and box office wins across genres and languages (notably Tamil, Hindi and Telugu).

Then, something shifted. The roles began to feel limiting, the ceiling closer. So, in 2013, she moved to Los Angeles. It’s not an uncommon tale by any stretch. But the task proved daunting considering that Chopra Jonas, 30 at the time, was no longer in the ingenue phase of her life.

“To restart your career in your 30s is terrifying,” she says. “I was secure. I was doing well financially. I was established. And I chose to blow it up.”

She arrived without a template, without guarantees, without even a clear lane. Her first attempt at entry came through music; she signed with Desi Hits!, founded by Anjula Acharia, in partnership with Interscope Records as she chased a pop career with little success. In those early days in Tinseltown, there were “angels,” like Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine, who kept her career from derailing. “Jimmy saw something that even I didn’t believe I could achieve,” she says.

Iovine pushed CAA to sign her. (She’s now represented by UTA.) And her music interlude paved the way for success on the screen. Still, Hollywood didn’t quite know what to do with her. Meetings were cordial but revealing.

“People would be like, ‘Oh, you speak English well,’” she recalls. “There was a preconceived notion of me whenever I went in for a meeting before I walked into the room.”

What she wanted, though, was much bigger than novelty casting. She longed to be part of a nascent global entertainment revolution. “Borderless entertainment. That was my dream,” she says. “Cross-pollinate with actors from different countries.”

Chopra Jonas was already wildly famous in India — a country with a population of 1.5 billion — and was starting to become a recognizable Hollywood star. That’s when she met Jonas at an Oscars party in 2017, adding a new dimension to her celebrity status in America.

“I’ve had a push-and-pull relationship with fame always,” she says. “And I’ve kind of divided myself into two. There’s my public side and my personal side.”

A few days before this meetup, I spotted Chopra Jonas and Jonas at a Netflix bash in L.A. celebrating the Golden Globes, where the actress was a presenter. Actually, I first spotted the bodyguards, stationed against a wall about 10 feet from the couple. The two men in black were discreet, but their earpieces were the giveaway. The guards weren’t there to stop an overzealous fan.

“I am OK with being approached by anyone and taking photos, and they know that I love people coming to talk to me,” she says of the guards. “They were there to make sure we’re not being recorded without consent. That’s my biggest thing with everyone having cellphones. It happens often, especially with my daughter. We’re in the park or having ice cream, and suddenly I’ll see it online. My security is for that reason. Otherwise, I don’t need it. Nobody’s gonna kill me.”

In the era of constant recording, Meta glasses and stealth livestreams, privacy has become its own flex. But in this one-on-one setting, Chopra Jonas appears at ease talking about her family.

“My daughter had a birthday yesterday. My apartment is like an explosion of unicorns and rainbows and mermaids right now,” she says, like every weary mom with a toddler.

There’s no shortage of viral conspiracy theories about her marriage: that they’re on the brink of splitting, that the relationship is performative, that they left the Globes separately! Chopra Jonas, who was very much with Jonas about an hour after the Globes at the Netflix party, has stopped trying to understand it.

“We’re eight years in,” she says. “If people want to keep waiting for it to implode, that’s their choice. I stopped thinking about it.”

At first, though, the intense scrutiny of the couple — in part due to their age gap, with Chopra Jonas 10 years Jonas’ senior — did sting.

“I don’t know what was it about us that rubbed people the wrong way,” she says. “I think there was the intercultural nature of it — different countries, different religions, age gap. It was very hurtful. And we both, instead of looking out, just sort of looked at each other, and we were like, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ So it’s like water off a duck’s back now.”

Meanwhile, Chopra Jonas talks about Jonas like a woman who is very happily married. At first, she hits the surface notes of domestic bliss, like watching her mother-in-law whip up a “mesmerizing” Texas sheet cake. Then she delves a little deeper, her speech becoming more stream of consciousness.

“We got married really quick, within six months of meeting,” she says. “When I first married him, I didn’t know if it was even real. This part of him. Because I was like, ‘This is crazy. This is put on.’ But Nick has this absolute sincerity. It inspires me every day in a profession which requires you to pivot and become whatever you need to put on. He’s constantly sincere. His whole day, whatever the conversation is, he is sincere. He started working when he was really young. His parents are the most wonderful, levelheaded, absolute saints, so I can see where it comes from. But it’s such a disarming quality about him.”

She continues, reflexively touching the back of her ear, where she has a tattoo of a check mark in a box. Jonas has a matching tattoo on his arm. It evokes a speech he made when he proposed, telling Chopra Jonas that she checked all his boxes. “He doesn’t feel the need to deviate from that sincerity for anything or anyone,” she says. “He is himself and comfortable in it, and I really learned how to be a lot more comfortable in my awkwardness and my insecurities since I got married to him. It really continues to be inspiring to me, this sincerity. We don’t see it often enough anymore, that deep truth when you just start talking to someone. You’re like, ‘Oh, this person is completely transparent.’”

Days later, Jonas describes his wife to me using three words: Driven. Creative. Fearless. He recalls one “Citadel” on-set incident that embodies all three.

“A camera matte box accidentally hit her in the eyebrow during the action sequence,” Jonas says. “She was bleeding, and I get a call that she’s been injured. I’m freaking out. But then she basically was like, ‘We need that to get this scene. I’m gonna tough it out.’ And she stayed in there and just grinded it out. Her determination, her grit, her willingness to get her hands dirty, really shows on the screen. You can feel her passion, her drive and the care that she brings to each role she plays. It’s a pretty big honor to get that front-row seat and get to watch her brilliance.”

All that said, the social media speculators might be better off obsessing about the future of “Citadel,” a series dubbed by industry observers as a disappointment if for no other reason than its stratospheric price tag, or “Varanasi.” Chopra Jonas is tight-lipped on both fronts.

“We have Season 2, for sure, but the rest? I have no idea,” she says of “Citadel,” which spawned two international spinoffs — “Citadel: Diana” (Italy) and “Citadel: Honey Bunny” (India). Amazon has yet to answer the question of what happens next with the franchise.

“I don’t ask. I go to work, do my job and I leave,” she says with a laugh. “I really admire the Russos. They’ve been a big part of my career and my journey here. Joe just dropped the script on text one day to me. Literally on text. He was like, ‘Check this out.’ That’s classic Joe style. And here we are four years later.”

With “Varanasi,” Chopra Jonas is circling back — on her own terms — to Indian cinema. The time-traveling spectacle, which also stars Mahesh Babu, marks her first Indian film since 2019 and her first Telugu-language project in more than a decade. She’s been shooting it off and on for close to two years.

“This is unlike anything I’ve ever done,” she says, speaking carefully.

Rajamouli, whose “RRR” was a global sensation, has shown almost nothing of his new film — even to his actors. “We travel from like Antarctica to … And just the worlds that he creates are so larger than life, and nobody has the vision that he does,” Chopra Jonas says. “So even I’m excited to see more.”

When she signed on to star, she gave Rajamouli one ultimatum.

“I was like, ‘Listen, I’m coming back to Indian movies. I have to do a dance song. Like, you have to make me dance.’ I know I’m gonna be doing it, but we haven’t shot it yet. OK, that’s one of the last things, which I’m really looking forward to. But we already did do one where choreography was crazy. It’s so intricate.”

Given the clandestine nature of the project, she’s probably already said too much.

It’s a Friday afternoon, and a three-day weekend looms, one without any concrete itinerary. Jonas is on tour, and Chopra Jonas will soon travel back to India for “Varanasi.”

“Nick was like, ‘You guys should make plans.’ And I want to see where the day takes us,” she says. “That’s the goal — no goal!”

Chopra Jonas will wrap up the workday by reading a few scripts. On the professional front, she wants to keep stretching. Last summer, she shot Nicholas Stoller’s upcoming “Judgment Day” opposite Will Ferrell and her “Baywatch” co-star Zac Efron. The Amazon film marks her first English-language comedy. It’s a genre she would like to continue to explore.

The afternoon light is fading fast. And she needs to start tidying up those unicorns and mermaids. The detritus of the birthday party forces her to look back — perhaps uncomfortably, if only fleetingly, for a woman whose career is all about momentum. But Chopra Jonas shoots down that characterization.

“I’m OK where I am and am taking a Zen approach,” she says. “And if I feel creatively stagnant or if I get stuck in a box, I need to shake the box off. But I’m never in a rush.”

She may not like the word “crossover.” Then again, she doesn’t need it anymore.

Set Design: Jenny Correa/Walter Schupfer; Styling: Wayman + Micah/The Only Agency; Makeup: Carolina Gonzalez/A Frame Agency; Hair:  Harry Josh/Statement Artists/Harry Josh Pro Tools; Manicure: Pattie Yankee/Opus Beauty; Look 1 (cover, Pink feather dress) Dress: Bronx and Banco; Shoes: Black Suede Studio; Earrings: Bvlgari; Look 2 (Gold large sequin gown) Dress: Bronx and Banco; Shoes: Jimmy Choo; Earrings: Bvlgari; Look 3 (Pink shearling coat) Coat: Susanna Chow; Earrings and rings: Bvlgari; Look 4 (Gold gown with train): Dress: Archive Donna Karan; Shoes: Jimmy Choo; Earrings and bracelets: Bvlgari; Look 5 (Brown sequin gown) Dress: Sergio Hudson; Necklace and earrings: Bvlgari