Priyanka Chopra makes juggling major projects in Bollywood and Hollywood look like a cakewalk.
But ABC's Quantico star, who has also been nominated in the Best Actress category for Dil Dhadakne Do and in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in Bajirao Mastani at this year's International Indian Film Awards (IIFA), says moving between two continents for her on screen commitments has been hectic but satisfying at the same time.
“I love what I do and I don’t take my career for granted,” says the 33-year-old actress during an interview at IIFA in Madrid, Spain. Chopra will be performing at the awards night tomorrow.
“Nobody can just sit down and say, ‘come and hand me success.’ It doesn’t happen. You have to work hard for it.”
Chopra, who made it to the Time magazine's 100 most influential people's list this year, says that shooting for the second season of Quantico, in which she plays the lead FBI agent Alex Parrish who is a prime suspect in a terrorist attack, will begin in July.
“The show has moved to New York,” says the actress. “So you’ll see me running on the roads somewhere saving the city. It should be fun.”
She says it will also be very different from the last season because some of the cast members will not be returning for the next season. “The new season will have the same flash forward and flashback format but this time it will be about how Alex’s choices will affect all her relationships. Everyone from the cast doesn’t come back for Season 2,” she says.
Chopra also makes her Hollywood debut with the film reboot of the nine-season hit television soap drama Baywatch that aired in the 90s. Chopra plays Victoria Leeds, the main antagonist in the film about Los Angeles County lifeguards that will release in 2017.
Chopra, who has wrapped up the shoot for the film, says she was initially offered a small part but after some discussions with the creative team she ended up taking on the role “reserved for a key male villain with my own spin to it.”
The actress says New York scares her. “It’s a bit like Mumbai. It’s spirit is like Mumbai.”
The superstar says she was on a tight schedule while shooting Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Bajirao Mastani and the TV show Quantico. " I shot Bajirao with Quantico," she says.
“I used to fly from the US to India on the weekends to shoot each scene. I would fly from New York on Friday and arrive in Mumbai on Sunday, shoot full day with Sanjay sir and then fly back to the US to shoot Quantico on Monday.”
Chopra says she will continue to look for varied characters to keep it fresh in her career. “My filmography will reveal that I only look for different characters. I don’t like repeating roles. I’m not a method actor. I like being spontaneous and instinctive. So I create characters while I know so well that you can give me any scene and I know exactly how they’ll turn out. I know them like my best friends. It’s not difficult for me to jump from one to the other.”
She says she has her sights sets on much bigger projects, not just in India and Hollywood. “I love Hindi movies but I also love the work that I am doing in American, so I want to be able to do both. I don’t want the best of both worlds, I want the whole world.”
IIFA awards will take place in Spain, Madrid tomorrow (Saturday). The show will be aired on Colors TV in the UAE on July 10.
aahmed@thenational.ae
