Priyanka Chopra: "You don’t need to be afraid of who you are"

Priyanka on leaving the U.S. for India in eleventh grade…

“There was this girl who was a major bully. I think she didn’t like me because her boyfriend liked me, or some high school dynamic. She made my life hell. She used to call me names and would push me against the locker. High school’s hard for everybody, and then there’s this woman. I asked my mom, ‘What do you think about me coming back?’ She flew down and picked me up.”

Priyanka on what people don’t understand about being Indian-American…

“I don’t think a lot of people understand what Indians are. And that’s our fault, a little. We tend to forget our roots a bit. As kids [we think], If I’m too Indian, I’ll be put in a box, and people will think of me as different. They’ll think I’m weird, because I eat Indian food or my name is difficult to pronounce. That girl in school used to call me 'curry'. You’re scared of those things. We’re afraid of letting people see the glory of who we are.”

Sebastian Kim

Priyanka on being self-conscious about her skin colour as a teen…

“A lot of girls who have a darker skin hear things like, ‘Oh, poor thing, she’s dark. Poor thing, it’ll be hard for her.’ In India they advertise skin-lightening creams: ‘Your skin’s gonna get lighter in a week.’ I used it [when I was very young]. Then when I was an actor, around my early twenties, I did a commercial for a skin-lightening cream. I was playing that girl with insecurities. And when I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh shit. What did I do?’ And I started talking about being proud of the way I looked. I actually really like my skin tone.”

Priyanka on the upswing of violence toward Indian Americans and the idea of the quiet “model minority”…

“Staying in your lane—I heard that so much. I want to make my lane! And yes, it’s an extremely scary time. Maybe I, being on the platform that I am, can say this louder than the kid who has to get on the subway and go to school: You don’t need to be afraid of who you are. I don’t want any kid to feel the way I felt in school. I was afraid of my bully. It made me feel like I’m less—in my skin, in my identity, in my culture.”

Priyanka on the word exotic…

“When somebody else calls you exotic, exotic is a box—it’s the stereotype of snake charmers and face jewelry. You’re just that stereotype. But I don’t get offended anymore. I used to get offended by things that were said to me, or how I was seen. Now I educate. If I get pissed off, I’ll educate in a sassy way. Other times I educate in a Gandhi-like way. You know—I have my moods. [Laughs.] … So once, on an airplane [in Europe], I went up to go to the bathroom, and the [flight attendant] was like, ‘Oh, the bathroom’s back there.’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s right there.’ He was like, ‘Oh, that’s just for first class.’ I was like, ‘I’m sitting in first class.’ And he was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry.’ And I just said, ‘It’s OK. I’m sure you haven’t seen many of us, but a lot of us travel first class.’”

Sebastian Kim

Priyanka on building the perfect date…

“Dwayne [Johnson]’s drive. I find drive in men very attractive, OK? Also, Dwayne’s gentlemanly pull-out-a-chair-for-a-girl vibe. Mix that with Zac’s abs, Jake McLaughlin’s eyes, and my coactor in India Ranveer Singh’s rebelliousness.”

Priyanka on getting paid less than men…

“I was rejected many times. I cried. I was told that female actors are replaceable in films because they just stand behind a guy anyway. I’m still used to being paid—like most actresses around the world—a lot less than the boys. We’re told we’re too provocative or that being sexy is our strength, which it can be, and it is, but that’s not the only thing we have.”

Read the full interview on US GLAMOUR's website.

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