Priyanka Chopra in a recent interview reflected on playing the role of a “sexual predator” very early in her career, when she was 21, in the film Aitraaz, and how her script choices have changed, influenced with the great response to the film.
In the latest edition of Vanity Fair’s ongoing video series, the actor also talked about the most pivotal moments in her professional life, winning the Miss World pageant, appearing in The Matrix Resurrections, her baby plans with Nick Jonas, and an interesting statement “Someone From The Northeast Should Have Played Mary Kom, I Look Nothing Like Her.”
Aitraaz, Priyanka’s first film, was directed by Abbas-Mustan and starred Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor in lead roles. However, she portrayed a woman in an unhappy marriage, making sexual passes at her ex-boyfriend and where she accuses him of rape when he resists her.
Priyanka said in an interview with Vanity Fair “At that time, big heroines who’d be in the mainstream commercial movies, had to be a lot more coy, pure, good girls. Versus my character in Aitraaz, who was a bad b**ch. At that time, it was a lot.”
She continued, “Because my character was a sexual predator, and I was 21 or 22, people were like, ‘If you play such a sexually charged character, I don’t know if your audience will be able to see you with that kind of purity and that dream girl. The girl you want to take to your parents, basically, versus the one you want to take to your bed’.”
However, Priyanka also admitted that she was shocked by how well her character in Aitraaz was received, for that she said, “I’ll never forget, we were at the screening and I was terrified. I was sort of embarrassed too because my parents were watching it as well. When the movie finished, people stood up and they started clapping and they started looking at me. There were other people in the movie who were massive stars but I walked out of the theatre and people were standing outside to congratulate me. And it was such a crazy moment in my head because I had built it up in my head that I was going to be cancelled after this movie and no one’s ever going to work with me again.”
Aitraaz, according to Priyanka, changed her career and encouraged her to take on new projects. For her role in the film, she received the Filmfare Award for Best Villain.