Why is the title of your book called ‘Unfinished’?Because I think all of us are eventually unfinished. We are all works in progress. It’s a futile attempt to try and finish yourself or complete yourself every day. We change every day, we evolve. So that’s one reason. Second, I feel like there’s a lot that I want to do in my life, as I go forward. Third, I felt like I’ve left a lot of things unfinished in my life and moved on, when I felt like it was okay to do that. So multiple reasons why ‘Unfinished’ made sense for me at this point in my life.
How did writing this book help you on a personal level?
I’m not someone who shares my life, but I could have skimmed the surface. I chose to dig deep. I felt like there’s been so much that’s been written about me. Books have been written about me and people feel a sense of familiarity with me.
I just wanted people to know me, and I wanted to give them an insight into what my truth for me is. And for people who are getting to know me now, hopefully through me, they’ll get to know where I came from. My culture, my work ethic and all that has really defined who I am.
Did you discover a side to yourself or a thought about yourself that you had not been aware of earlier, prior to the writing of this book?
Yes, I would say without trying to sound pompous maybe, but when I got out of the other side and I read the manuscript for the first time, I was very overcome by emotion of just how many mountains and valleys I have been through. Not just having dealt with it, I wasn’t taught any of that and I was exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. When I finished reading the book, I patted my youngest self on the back for having a sense of principles and values and living my life on my terms. I gave my youngest self a hug and said, ‘It’s okay for all those times, when you were sad and cried through something, which was really hard.’
I gave myself a reason to breathe. I was like, ‘Okay! I’ve done this well for the last 20 years and now it’s time to find a sense of solace in where I am, a sense of contentment, a sense of peace. And confidence in my craft, too. I’m very confident in what I bring to the table now, unlike what I was, of course, when I was starting out.
You’ve said you are a comfortable mashup of the East and the West, the old and the new. Even when you faced racism at your school, you walked away from that. Was that because you think it is better to step away from negativity and evil? Is it better to walk around the fences and try to find another path?
When you’re trekking and you see a really big boulder right in front of you, that has stayed there for thousands of years. That’s the idea. Instead of picking at it as you know, I’m just alone, just one person, I’ll try to go around it. And when I’ve gone around it and I’ve reached the other side, so many other people will be able to go around and find their way instead of getting stuck and fighting this big boulder. So, exactly like that there are fences and there are ceilings that have been created for women and for people in every field.
Sometimes the best way to prove that you can do it is by doing it. Instead of fighting a fight that has existed for such a long time and wasting the wonderful opportunity that you might get by trying another route. I don’t always have one plan. I always have multiple plans. I don’t get defined by one failure. I dust myself off and I’ll try something else because eventually it is the steps that you take going forward. Instead of getting stuck, it’s important to keep moving and taking one step forward and slowly you turn around and see that you’ve gone a really long distance.
Suddenly that boulder will not have any importance because I’ve gone around and then somebody else would go around and then there’ll be a road that will take everyone around the boulder.
Alex Parrish, the character you played in ‘Quantico’ was totally different with a bold and brazen side. Did you really relate much with her?
Yes, I’m a bold person. I’m not someone who, you know, works on the back foot. I’m more on the front foot. But Alex is a character I’m very proud of because I hadn’t seen in American TV or film, too many leading ladies who are Indian in mainstream movies and I was very proud of being able to play just a mainstream character without being burdened by my heritage, which should rather be an asset. It shouldn’t be a burden at all. I am very proud of that. I love the fact that she was her own person and she wasn’t scared of anyone. She wasn’t even scared of being alone. In fact, she made her own decisions. Alex was a very liberating character to play. She was a lot of fun.
You played negative characters in Bollywood and Hollywood — why do you always get these roles? Do you see yourself as a bad girl?
I guess people like me as a bad girl (laughs) Do I see myself as a bad girl? Sometimes! Everyone is good and bad sometimes.
You wanted to be an engineer, but you became an actor, Miss India, Miss World, a Hollywood star and a singing sensation, too. Do you believe in destiny? Do you believe that fate has it all written for us?
I believe in destiny and hard work. I feel like there are doors that are decided for you or opportunities that are sprinkled around you. And it really is a person’s character that will allow them to recognise the opportunity and exploit the chance and to work hard within the opportunity, to understand when it works for you and when it doesn’t.
I think that it has to do with a sort of mindset. I do believe that milestones are sort of predetermined. What your personality is like and what your strengths are like make a difference to what you can achieve. It’s up to us to move out of the fall that we all live in as human beings.
Sometimes if we’re emotional, sad, insecure and angry, all of that creates a fault. If you can focus on your larger ambition and larger goal and see through all the fog, then I think it’s an easier route for destiny to shape your life in the best way possible.
What are the qualities that held you steady through all the crazy turns that your life took?
My family. The one thing that my family definitely taught me was nothing can break you. You might feel like you’re very close to being broken, but you’re self-sufficient enough that nothing can break you.
Failures of any type, rejection of any kind, when you have a family that gives you such a sense of support, that no matter what happens, I can come back to my parents and say I messed up and they’ll still be in my corner. That kind of confidence gives a child a really large sense of self. And I think having my family have my back, no matter what I decided, was the greatest gift of them all.
I think that helped me through a lot of ups and downs, it kept me steady, it kept me from drowning. I give a lot of credit to my family support.
You’ve also said confidence is not something that is inherent, most of the time you build it up. So how difficult is it to build up confidence?
Well, to me, it’s like a muscle. It’s like when you do the riyaaz (practice) you get better at it, so it’s the same for confidence. Like with anything else in life, confidence is something that has to be practiced. No one is born with it. Your circumstances define it, your environment defines it, your personality defines it.
You don’t always need confidence, as well. I’m having a conversation with you today, we’re just the two of us and we’re just talking, right. I don’t need to come in with a sense of, ‘I’m so confident’. But there are times where you do need that. When you’re walking into a room and you’re insecure and you need to find that confidence, that’s when you should have it.
Also, I think it’s important to remember that it’s okay to be human and it’s okay to be scared and to be vulnerable, but to have access to that confidence. Use it, when you need it the most. I wasn’t always confident. I learned how to do it. And the easiest way of doing that is actually by listening and being aware of the room, not talking too much, listening and understanding why people do what they do.
You’ve said you learned by watching other actors and you say in your book that you learnt the most important lessons while just watching other actors. Can you elaborate on that process?
Well, the first one is predominantly reacting, and actors who are waiting to say their own lines, instead of listening to what their co-actors are saying, will always seem self-absorbed. The greatest of actors, even when they know what their co-actor’s line is, have to really listen to what they’re saying, because you have to react. You have to react to the way they say the line, to what they’re feeling at that moment. And that was a really big lesson for me, very early on, that acting is reacting.
And the second was that there’s never an isolated emotion. As a human being, you feel multiple things. I’m talking to you right now. I have an interview after this. I just came back from the set. I want to try and find something to eat. I have to get briefed about some other things. I’m thinking multiple things at any given moment. So, when I’m acting a scene, I have to think about all the things that I’m feeling as a character. Only children have isolated emotions. Like when they’re angry, they don’t care who they are in front of. They’ll have a tantrum or they’re upset and they’ll scream at the mall. Or even if you’re outside with them, they’ll just cry. Those are isolated emotions. But as we grow into adults, we have multiple emotions at the same time. That’s crucial within a scene.
Your dad told you, be like water. That’s a beautiful thought. Please tell us a little bit about how one can be like water.
It’s such a beautiful thought, right? I was about five years old and my dad and my mom both were in the military. So we used to move every two years. And when I had to leave my best friend or my school, I was really upset and I started crying and I said, ‘I have to move again. I don’t want to go’. So my dad told me something, which had such a sense of power. He said ‘In the new place that you go to, you’ll have no baggage of what you have right now. That this teacher doesn’t like me or this friend is not my friend or whatever. When you go to a new place, you have a clean slate, so you can be whoever you want.’
And he said, ‘You should be like water’, and I said ‘What does that mean?’ He said water can be as powerful as a waterfall. It can cascade down onto stones and make holes in them. That’s how strong water can be. But at the same time, it can be as still as a teacup, it can be anything and everything it wants to be within any vessel that it’s put into.
So I should be like water, adapt anywhere and thrive in any kind of situation that I’ve been put into. It was so empowering, at such a young age, to know that I’m not bound by the situation that I am in. If I go into a new city, I need to be curious of what I know, instead of being scared of what I don’t know. Lean in and ask the question and educate yourself. It was a very powerful thing to learn, at such a young age.
Is that why you have been able to reinvent yourself on multiple occasions?
I really think reinvention and evolution is the name of the game. We can’t be the same person that we were 5 or 10 years ago. You have to keep changing and you have to keep realising, who am I at this time of my life? We can’t be holding on to the truths of the past because that’s not true anymore. And if you don’t evolve, you’re going to be left behind.
Some people wait till they reach the precipice before they’re either coaxed into or take the step into evolution and progression. But others are always willing to evolve even before there are telling signs of a change. It always feels like you’re from the latter group. Would you agree?
I think it seems like I am the person who’s choosing everything in my life, but it’s not true. It’s just like anybody else. There are times where I have waited till the last minute, and then finally understood that it’s futile to wait any longer.
I’ve spent a lot of time investing in things which I just heard are not working and I just stay in, I stay in, but at some point you have to choose yourself. Take my music for example. I stayed at it, I tried but I had to recognise when it was not living up to my standards and I could have spent a lot more time doing it. But I knew that it was futile and knowing that makes all the difference.
So do you often realize and accept that it’s not working out and then you move on?
Acceptance is such a large part of life. Whether it’s dealing with grief, whether it’s dealing with acceptance itself, it doesn’t mean we accept something and then sit back and wait for somebody else to do something about it. Acceptance is a sense of closure and a sense of power where you feel like this is a chapter I have done in my life. This day is over. Tomorrow’s another day. It’s literally as simple as that.
It requires a lot of strength and confidence in your faith. I think good things happen to good people. I’m a firm believer of that. You wake up every morning, just try to be a good person and it’s not very difficult to be a good person. I really believe that. You try to make every person’s life around you easier. You try to live life with a sense of joy. Try to do your work in the best way possible. And I think that’s what gives you a sense of confidence, a sense of faith that this too shall pass. That’s the mantra that I inherited from my parents. This too shall pass. There’s nothing, that’s permanent. Change is the most constant thing. For every up, there will be a down and for every down, there will be an up.
Even though you’ve touched upon this concept in your memoir, what do you think is the purpose of life?
Yes, that’s the kind of question we ask Siri. Siri, what is the purpose of life? (laughs) Honestly I do have a take on that. The only thing that we truly know will happen is birth and death, right? You’re born alone, you’re going to die alone. And I feel the purpose of life is what happens in between those points. I think the purpose of our lives is the journey that we’re going to live and what you do with that journey, whether it is happy, whether it is joyous.
Life is a gift. I believe we are sent on this Earth to enjoy the enormous, wonderful things that we have around us as human beings. And if we can’t do that, then I think we failed at our purpose, especially the ones who have the privilege to enjoy the things that have been given to us. The purpose in life is to be able to live it in the best possible way instead of being bogged down by aspects of human nature like insecurity, ego, pride, anger and all the negative things that keep us down, that limit us.
It’s important to be limitless. And the only way we can do that is if we recognize that our journey is alone. Everybody’s coming in and out of your life for a little while. That doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do.
In your memoir you’ve explained the 90-10 principle, but you know, the life of a celebrity, such as yourself, 90% of it is in any case known to all of us.
(Laughs) That’s what everyone thinks. They feel like they know about 90% of my life, you don’t even know 15% of it.
But even the reader who thought they knew 90 percent about Priyanka Chopra, are surprised after they’ve read your book. Clearly there’s so much more to discover in the life of a celebrity like yourself.
Yeah. Because the perception of me that you had was brought to you on a platter by a multitude of people who thought they had a perception of me. So as a public person, that’s what happens. No one really knows you. It’s just people who write about you and make people think that they know you.
In a way your book is a tell-all memoir, where you’ve said everything about yourself, your feelings, vulnerability and sensitivity. But you have not named names. Were you tempted to do that at any point?
No, because it’s no one else’s story but mine. It’s Priyanka’s memoir. I read a few reviews, which said that she didn’t speak the truth about things. So basically you wanted a gossip rag in my book. If you wanted it to be a tell-all, great, but I’m not a gossip magazine. I’m really grateful that my book is a number one bestseller around the world without it being salacious, because I don’t respond to that. I am not that person. I believe in having grace and a lot of media doesn’t.
You’ve spoken about your parents’ relationship and how you wanted a relationship, just like theirs of a true partnership and romance and poetry and music as well. Have you found that and what are the lessons that love has taught you?
I have a ring on my finger, so I’ve definitely found it. (laughs) I wouldn’t have settled down if I hadn’t found it. I think love is the most crucial thing in life. That’s the end game. It just doesn’t just mean loving your partner, it also means loving your parents and family. I really believe love makes the world go round. The only way to love is to go deeply and fully and give yourself completely.
But it’s also important to get someone else to give you completely, instead of it being skewed where only one person is doing it. You can’t be doing the heavy lifting alone. I think the one thing that my marriage has definitely taught me, which I guess I didn’t feel the need to have, which now I can’t live without is having your partner give complete credence and credit to the job that I do and to my work. It’s so amazing when I see how Nick accommodates his life for my achievements or my career. Where I have to go and what my choices are, is so important to him. I didn’t realise that I needed a cheerleader.
The one thing that’s most important to me outside of my family is my work. It has stood by me like a rock since I started as a 17-year-old. And I didn’t realise that I needed my partner to understand the value of how much hard work I’ve put into building this career. It’s really wonderful to have a partner who appreciates that.
Has being married to Nick changed you in some way as a person. And also has it impacted your work in a positive manner?
He has impacted me in a big way. I’ve become a lot calmer in life. Earlier I would bite people’s heads off. If I get pissed off now, I’m a little calmer. (laughs) My husband is a bit calmer and he finds solutions. He’s a diplomat. Whereas, I’m just like a
mirchi. If I go off, I go off.
I think within my work, I’ve learned from Nick a lot. He’s an amazingly talented, creative person and we bounce a lot of our work off of each other. His ideas with me, my ideas with him and then we develop things together. So having a creative partnership is amazing. My parents were both doctors and they used to both check in with each other about their work. They would both say, ‘Oh, I’m planning on doing this. What about you, what do you think about that?’ I find that fascinating. I’m so grateful that I married somebody in my profession and who understands the creative ideas that I have. That’s really wonderful to have.
Even though your mother has called you a bit of a rolling stone, you seem to have found a sthirta (stability) and therav (calmness). Have you finally found your groove?
I think I finally found my roots. It’s more like I always had a groove.
You’ve always had a fun and naughty side. You’ve revealed the incident of when you put a beetle into your poor father’s ear and he had to go and get a surgery. That irrepressible naughtiness in you, is it still the same today?
I mean, it’s part of my nature and I like playing. I like having fun in everything that I do, in the way I speak and the way I am. Obviously putting the beetle in my dad’s ear was fun for me, not for him. I enjoyed that. Things changed from that moment though. I was sent off to boarding school.
Is there any Bollywood movie of yours that Nick loves watching over and over again?
We both didn’t know much about each other’s careers when we met. So after we got married, we did a sort of ‘show and tell’. He showed me his earlier music and work and I showed him a few of my movies. Nick loves ‘Dil Dhadakne Do’, he’s watched it multiple times.
Does Nick understand any Hindi at all?
Yes. I’ve told most people who meet us, don’t speak in Hindi in front of him. He picks it up. He’s a very astute man.
A lot of your thoughts and insights into yourself and your future come across as poetic in the memoir. Do you write poetry as well?
I used to write poetry a lot. That’s also my favourite form of reading. Whenever I read a book, it’s the poetic visuals that are most engaging. I’m a performance artist and I needed my book to have a visual quality so that the reader would feel transported into my memory.
