Priyanka Chopra Jonas: As yet unfinished She’s the multi-award winning, multi-talented, actress, producer, singer, and all-round global superstar. But, here, we draw back the curtain to speak candidly about anxiety, vulnerability, and the unstoppable force of change... Writing | Kathryn Wheeler 68 | <strong>April</strong> <strong>2021</strong> | happiful.com
a fresh perspective She doesn’t know whether it was a bug, something she ate, or anxiety, but one night – when Priyanka Chopra Jonas was just eight years old, having recently started at boarding school – she vomited in her bed. Not wanting to disturb the peace, she lay next to the puddle until, late at night when everyone was asleep, she crept out to wash the sheets. She hung them up to dry, slept on an unmade bed, and then remade her bed with damp sheets early in the morning, before anyone woke up. It’s a startlingly intimate snapshot of the now globally famous, endlessly glamorous star, and receiver of countless accolades – including Miss World in 2000, a spot on Time magazine’s 2016 list of most influential people, two National Film Awards, two People’s Choice Awards, six IIFA awards, eight Screen Awards, and the Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice, to name only a selection – but it’s one of many that she chose to share in her memoir, Unfinished. As we chat over Zoom I wonder, is pulling back the curtain intimidating? Priyanka laughs in response. “I was bored with what I was reading when I wasn’t open,” she says, candidly. “Eventually, I think it was very healing for me. I’ve been dinner table conversation for the public for a very long time, but then the pandemic happened and I think, like everyone, I was feeling overwhelmed, so when I started writing, it just poured out of me, and I didn’t stop myself.” Although she still doesn’t know what it was that caused her upset stomach that night when she was eight, anxiety is something that Priyanka does have some experience with. If I talk to someone – friends, family, therapists – about what I’m feeling, it takes away the power “I think all of us do, don’t we?” She ponders. “We internalise feelings, and that’s what turns into anxiety. But, over time, what I learned is that if I talk to someone – friends, family, therapists – about what I’m feeling, it takes away the power of the anxiety.” As she reflects on her experiences, Priyanka’s tone is calm, even, and thoughtful. “I feel it has a lot more control over me when I’m alone – when I choose to incubate or when I choose to deal with what I’m feeling myself, because I’m self- sufficient, self-reliant; I’m strong, I’m tough,” she says playfully, with a blend of irony. “When I do that, it’s my pride that fans the flame of anxiety. “I’ve realised that I don’t want to be solitary in my sorrow,” Priyanka declares. “Sadness is seductive. It feels like a warm blanket. But that eventually starts eating away at your spirit, and changes who you are. You become a liability to yourself, you can’t get out of your own way. I’ve had anxiety, of course, but now I have the tools in my toolbox to deal with it better than I did as a kid.” Her main tool is conversation, speaking to people she trusts about the things that are going on inside. But it wasn’t until she reached her 30s that she was able to really articulate what she was going through. As Priyanka talks me through the things she does for self-care (“A couple of hours’ chit-chat, being able to have a laugh, talk about silly things – and do silly things!”), I’m picking up on a vibrant, loving, and supportive social life. But it hasn’t always been that way. While she gushes about the nurturing backing of her parents, when she was a young teenager, Priyanka moved to America and experienced racially charged bullying while at school – to the point where she had to return to India – and she notes similar experiences as an adult. >>> happiful.com | <strong>April</strong> <strong>2021</strong> | 69
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