The first-of-its-kind spy series will see the two actors play Nadia Sinh and Mason Kane, members of the elite spy organisation, working in the shadows to keep a check on terrorist organisations around the world. The trailers gave fans a glimpse of all the action, adventure and some over-the-top fight scenes set to play out on their television screens when the Prime Video series drops on April 28.
However, it’s not all guns and gore in this series, as leading lady Priyanka Chopra explains, “Citadel is its own world and the beauty of the show and what sets it apart from all the other spy verses is the heart in it and the characters’ relationships and how that takes precedent. The action and the stunts and the scale that always comes second to what they are feeling.”
Priyanka, who has been paired up opposite Marvel’s Eternals star Richard for the first time, strikes up quite the chemistry in the series. When ETimes asked the two if there were any Bollywood nights involved in getting into the groove to play on-screen lovers, Richard revealed it was quite the opposite.
“I suppose we got to know each other through working together on the script, though these fight rehearsals we’d have to do together, and trying to kind of thread a narrative through this action and try and keep intricacies and subtleties of human beings amidst all of this spectacle that the show has. That just comes from lots of hard work,” Madden said and added, “We like each other, so that makes it really easy. It puts us in a place where when we’re on screen, we can create and have fun together.”
“And that was the common factor between us which really broke the ice,” Priyanka said.
“We were both prep-oriented. We were both really particular and intentional and I was like, ‘Thank God! It’s so nice to work with someone who does that,” she added.
The show’s trailer teases some steamy love-making scenes between the two. A shot sees Priyanka and Richard lying in bed barely covered by a white sheet. We had to ask how they worked up the courage to shoot these intimate scenes together.
As a gentleman never kisses and tells, Richard said, “I was actually trying to avoid that question.”
But, thankfully, we had Priyanka ready to fire away. “No, it’s ok,” she said with an assuring smile and explained to her hunky co-star, “They just get to see it all on-screen, they don’t know that there are like 2,000 people in the room while we are shooting.”
Explaining how Richard and she worked up the courage and shot some of these steamy scenes, Chopra said, “We helped each other out. If I was uncomfortable with some unflattering camera angles, I would tell him ‘Put your hand there and cover me’ and he would tell me ‘You put your hand here’.”
Fans will have to wait until next week to watch Priyanka and Richard in action as they signal off a new global spy series with an Indian and an Italian instalment currently in the works.
