Priyanka Chopra stars as the lead in the hit show Quantico. Eric Liebowitz / ABC / OSNsss
Priyanka Chopra stars as the lead in the hit show Quantico. Eric Liebowitz / ABC / OSNsss

Quantico star Priyanka Chopra says India has a lot to offer Hollywood



Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra hopes her leading role in hit United States television show Quantico paves the way for other Indian actors to make it big in America.

The former Miss World is blazing a trail as the first Indian lead in a US TV series, playing FBI agent turned suspected terrorist Alex Parrish in the ABC thriller.

“I can only hope that it opens the right doors,” the 33-year-old said. “I truly believe that we have a huge pool of talent in India, which spans actors, directors, technicians and the like, and there is a huge window of opportunity for them to explore outside India.”

Chopra has received glowing reviews for her turn as Parrish, who is accused in the drama of masterminding the biggest terror attack on American soil since September 11, 2001.

The series jumps between present day, when she is on the run from the law and trying to prove her innocence, and her time as a trainee agent at the FBI’s academy at Quantico in Virginia.

The plot leaves viewers trying to guess who plotted the attack — Parrish or one of her former colleagues at Quantico.

While Bollywood actors Anil Kapoor (24), Rahul Khanna (The Americans) and Nimrat Kaur (Homeland) have all featured in American shows, Chopra is the first actor from India to headline an original series.

Her face is plastered across billboards in major US cities and Chopra, who was crowned Miss World in 2000, said she felt the pressure.

“I was nervous, period,” she states. “Firstly I am trying something new, I was attempting it in a whole new geography, I was doing it in a different language from what the audience is used to for my on-screen persona.”

The star of Bollywood hits such as Dil Dhadakne Do (Let The Heart Beat) and biopic Mary Kom added that she felt it was important that her Indian-American character was ethnically ambiguous.

"There is a lot of diversity in the characters on Quantico but it's not a cliched representation," she says.

“It is, however, more a mirror to society in the USA — a multicultural mix of people from all over the world, connected to their ethnicity in some way but who primarily consider themselves citizens of the United States of America.”

Quantico is shown on Mondays at 10pm OSN First HD

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