After playing a baddie in the much-panned big screen version of Baywatch last year, Priyanka Chopra appeared in A Kid Like Jake , a sensitive, moving film. She made her presence felt in a small role as a friend to the anxious lead pair (Claire Danes and Jim Parsons), parents of a gender-fluid four-year-old in New York. These two vastly different films mirror Chopra’s career, which has swung between extremes: noteworthy to downright vapid.
Post Quantico, the series in which Chopra played FBI recruit Alex Parrish, the actor’s life — from Bareilly to L.A. (via Mumbai) — is being viewed afresh and has inspired not one, but two new biographies by film journalists: Priyanka Chopra: The Incredible Story of A Global Bollywood Star by Aseem Chhabra, and Priyanka Chopra: The Dark Horse by Bharathi S. Pradhan.
Absolute go-getter
You don’t have to be a Chopra fan to want to read these two books; it’s enough if you are merely interested in how things work in showbiz. How did she become a global star while many others who started off on a similar footing, often with more access and privilege, such as Lara Dutta, Aishwarya Rai, Dia Mirza, Sushmita Sen, did not? Chhabra pieces together this puzzle engagingly, with the clarity of a film critic. He takes us to where it all began, the photo studio in Bareilly where she posed for pictures that her mother sent to the Miss India pageant. It traces her teenage years studying in the U.S. and how that may have shaped her; the “absolute go getter” attitude that helped her deal with and get past insults like “ kaali kalooti ” and criticism of her acting and dancing skills. As Chopra appeared more polished in every successive every film, there was the insecurity that she will not be able to pull off challenging characters, such as the autistic Jhilmil in Barfi .
When you get past the shower of praise, some of the interviews Chhabra conducts to understand her success story are insightful. This includes the take of her manager Anjula Acharya, who crafted her American career, filmmakers who worked with her — Anurag Basu, Karan Johar, Tarun Mansukhani — and those who groomed her in the early days: Pradeep Guha, Sathya Saran, Sabira Merchant and others. But Chhabra does not overstate Chopra’s talent, noting that while she has appeared in dozens of films, only a handful would qualify as good cinema. Yet this is a valid, inspiring story of ambition. He is critical, all the same, of her online persona and the times she goofed up, and her lack of a deep and intelligent world view: “Priyanka’s training is still incomplete in that regard.”
Professional heartbreak
Where Chhabra’s account of Chopra’s rise is studied, Pradhan’s is more tabloid. While her sources are similar, with some insight from Chopra herself, the behind-the-scenes banter about Chopra’s professional and private life that Pradhan extracts from insiders is biting: the early fallout with a boyfriend, the ugly case against her manager, lurid details of a nose surgery that cost her her first few films, and the various rumoured affairs with co-stars such as Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan that led to uncomfortable and often stormy situations.
Pradhan talks about how unsure Chopra was of doing the provocative role in Aitraaz and how the tricky scenes were shot, her breakdowns on set, the tantrums, and how she dealt with professional heartbreak. Tarun Mansukhani says he was often dismissive of her fashion sense on the sets of Dostana : “she didn’t know Gucci from Prada” but “she was questioning the costume every morning.”
The glamorous Chopra of today has travelled far. What emerges through Pradhan’s flowery narrative is the story of a driven star who rode the bumpy road and now flits between continents with an entourage of 12 to 25 people. Was it worth it? Some cards Chopra holds close to her chest, and perhaps she will reveal these in her memoir, Unfinished , due next year.
The freelance writer is a lover of cakes, chai, bookshops and good yarns.
