A movie star snagging a role on a TV show is no big whoop anymore. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson rhapsodized on True Detective, John Malkovich chewed his way through Crossbones, Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman earned Emmy nominations for their cold-blooded work on Fargo. But they’re small scale compared to Priyanka Chopra. Who?
Only one of the biggest actresses in the world.
The Hero: Love Story of a Spy. Aitraaz. Fashion. Krrish. Mary Kom. Agneepath. Kaminey. These are some of the top-grossing and most critically acclaimed Indian films in recent history, and what they all have in common is Chopra. She’s the Bollywood Marion Cotillard, or maybe Anna Kendrick, someone who’s both super famous and super respected, not to mention stunningly gorgeous. Chopra, 33, was named Miss World in 2000, and since then, she’s won a National Film Award for Best Actress, released a hit single (“Exotic,” featuring Pitbull), and was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
And now she’s set to make her American TV debut on Quantico, an ABC flashback-and-forward thriller that debuts on Sunday about a group of FBI recruits, one of whom is suspected of being a terrorist. It’s earning comparisons to How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal… so, basically all things Shonda Rhimes. (Tellingly, one of the show’s executive producers holds the same title on Grey’s Anatomy). If it’s half as exciting as the latter, or as crazy as the former, Quantico will be must-watch TV. So far, reviews have been intriguing, especially for Chopra’s performance. Here’s James Poniewozik in the New York Times:
The strongest human asset in Quantico is Ms. Chopra, a Bollywood superstar and former Miss World who is immediately charismatic and commanding amid the otherwise generic ensemble. If there’s a problem with her casting, it’s that she may come across as too seasoned and assured to be persuasive as a shaky, neophyte recruit.
Or is that exactly what they want you to think? If there’s one thing you can assume about the characters on Quantico, it’s that there’s more to them than you assume. Like not only Scandal but Homeland and many other heightened serials today, Quantico is hooked on twists. The last half of the pilot includes a revelation about one recruit that raises the plot’s outrageousness to threat-level Empire.
But the critical success of Quantico runs second to the importance of it starring Chopra, one of the first major Indian actresses to try to make the transition to American television. That process began in 2012, when Keli Lee, ABC’s executive vice president for talent and casting, met with Chopra and her manager, Anjula Acharia-Bath, and named some of the diverse actresses she’d gotten hired, including Modern Family‘s Sofia Vergara and Scandal‘s Kerry Washington. Acharia-Bath’s response? “Well, you haven’t done a South Asian yet, and we’re one-fifth of the population.”
Soon after, ABC agreed to either “develop a project for Ms. Chopra or cast her in an existing project.” Twenty-six scripts later, she found Quantico. Chopra describes her character, Alex, as “Jason Bourne in a female form,” which is promising, as is Chopra knowing how important this is. “This is an idea that no one has explored,” she told CNN, “taking a global actor, a global talent, and launching them in the American market. It’s new for all of us — ABC, me, everyone — it’s the new prototype. I guess we’ll find out what happens.” (One of Chopra’s demands when she signed up was for Quantico to be available everywhere, not just in the United States. The show will premiere in India next month, “faster than the typical delay of six months or a year for an overseas series,” according to the Washington Post.)
Chopra, who was born in India and moved to Massachusetts when she was 13, isn’t worried about making it here, though. As she explained to Vanity Fair, “I didn’t have like this, ‘I want to make it in America’ kind of thing… I didn’t need to do anything unless it happened to be the right thing. So I told [ABC’s casting executive Keli Lee], the only way I would do it is if you find me a show and a path which first will put me in the same position that I am in India.”
That’s a good position to be in. She has more than 30 million social-media followers, and Quantico creator Joshua Safran says that hanging out with Chopra, who’s starred in dozens of Bollywood films, is like being BFFs with Beyoncé. “Wherever she goes,” he said to BuzzFeed, “people know her, they notice her, they talk to her, they want things from her, yet she takes it all in stride and is so calm, cool, and collected, and so emotionally available and open. She’s one of a kind.”
She’s also a fantastic role model, a proud feminist who’s written columns for the Guardian and the New York Times and has worked with UNICEF since 2008, raising awareness for children’s rights. Or in Chopra’s own words, “I am an intelligent, ambitious, hard-working woman of today.”
Here’s hoping Americans notice.
