From unequal pay to harassment, the many revelations of Priyanka Chopra Jonas

Bollywood actress-turned global celebrity Priyanka Chopra has faced a lot of difficulties in her path to stardom. The ever expressive actress, who made waves for her role in the Amazon Prime Video web series 'Citadel', has also spoken out about them. Here's a look at what she said.

Inappropriate behaviour from a Bollywood producer: Priyanka Chopra Jonas Chopra Jonas said she walked out of a Hindi film in "2002 or 2003", when its producer placed a demand that "dehumanised" her. In an interview with ‘The Zoe Report’, the actress said the producer said he "needed to see her underwear".

On dating her Bollywood co-stars: Chopra Jonas revealed in an episode of 'Call Her Daddy' podcast that most of the men she had dated made her think of herself as a "doormat". "The repeating of the mistake was always feeling like, I need to be the caretaker, always feeling like it's okay to cancel my job or my work or my meeting or my priority to make sure that he's propped up. It was so normalised in my brain for so long that I ended up giving the power in such a skewed way that I never stood up for myself," she said. She said she soon realised she was being "self-destructive" and started feeling 'invisible' in her relationships.

On a botched nose surgery: On the Howard Stern Show, Chopra Jonas revealed that a botched nose surgery drove her into a "deep depression" and she even thought it could end her career. “It was a dark phase,” she said. “This thing happens, and my face looks completely different, and I went into a deep, deep depression.” She was fired from three movies during this phase.

On being cornered in Bollywood: Priyanka Chopra Jonas stirred a controversy with her statement on how she was cornered in Bollywood by a "certain set of influential people". Other Indian actresses, including Kangana Ranaut, blamed producer Karan Johar for isolating Chopra Jonas. "I've had tumultuous times back then, but today, I feel confident to speak about it in the hope that people at large would take notice of it, empathise (with me) and understand where I'm coming from," Chopra Jonas said recently. "I felt it was a safe space for me to open up about the rocky patch in my professional journey."

On freezing her eggs: Priyanka Chopra Jonas said she had frozen her eggs in her early 30s following the advice from her mother Madhu Chopra, who is an obstetrician-gynaecologist. “I felt such freedom, I did it in my early thirties and I could continue on an ambitious warpath, I wanted to achieve, and I wanted to get to a certain place in my career,” Chopra Jonas, who welcomed her first child Malti Marie via surrogacy in 2022, told Dax Shephard on the podcast ‘Armchair Expert’.

South Asian representation in Hollywood: Actress-producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas believes in greater representation of the South Asian community in Hollywood. “It has been my aim to represent India on the international canvas. People from the South Asian community have been working in the west for very many years but, for some reason they were never given a chance to headline a project or to feature on the posters of an international film, in most of the cases,” she told the news agency IANS in an interview. To this end, the actress takes it up as her responsibility to ensure that all people from the South Asian community appear on the poster or headline the projects for the English content.

On equal pay: Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas revealed in an interview that the web series 'Citadel' was the first time she's ever received equal pay as her male co-stars in her 20-year acting career. "I would get paid about 10 per cent of the salary of my male co-actor. [The pay gap] is large, substantially large. And so many women still deal with that. I'm sure I will too if I worked with a male co-actor now in Bollywood. "My generation of female actors have definitely asked [for equal pay]," she added. "We've asked, but we've not got it."