Priyanka is winning hearts
BY RITI SUNSHINE BHALLA: Desi girl Priyanka Chopra is receiving much love from fans and critics in the international circuit for her Hollywood debut Baywatch, which released in the US on Thursday, May 25. The film, directed by Seth Gordon and co-produced by Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock, has been the most talked about film in India. Priyanka plays a villain in the film—she has no slow beach running scenes or the signature red swimsuit—but the finesse with which she has handled the intense role, action sequence as well as the comic timing has displayed her convincing acting skills. In an exclusive conversation with Riti Sunshine Bhalla for BOLLYWOOD INSIDER, Priyanka talks about playing the “absurdly fabulous” Victoria Leeds, being ambitious, and her mother’s first reaction to learning that she had signed up for Baywatch reboot.
Your character, Victoria Leeds, is a villain. You won a Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role for the Film Aitraaz back in 2005, so this is something you’re not totally a stranger to. What is it like playing the bad guy?
I think that’s what I enjoyed the most—the fact that I played the bad guy. You can ask this to any actor and they’ll tell you the same thing. It’s always more fun playing the bad guy for some reason. And I think I realized that when I did Aitraaz. And after that, I did 7 Khoon Maaf as well, which was also bordering on the negative shades. But when you’re a villain in a comedy you can’t take yourself that seriously, and in Baywatch, she’s that kind of villain. She’s just so absurdly fabulous that you just like her.
She seems like a really bold, fierce, independent woman. Do you find that there are similarities between you and her?
Well, I’m not as evil, but I am proudly ambitious and so is she. I think in that way we may be similar. But I’m very different from Victoria; I don’t like so much hair, makeup, wardrobe, and hairspray as much as she does.
Baywatch, the original TV show, was a huge hit in India. I understand you were a huge fan yourself and you used to watch the show with your mother. How does she feel now that you’re a part of Baywatch? She must be so proud.
This was in the late 80s, early 90s or something; I must have been 6 or 7. I remember really vividly watching it with my mum and I remember Pamela Anderson on every guy’s wall. My mum was really tickled silly when I told her that I’m going to do the Baywatch reboot. She found it very funny.
You used to watch them on the show—Pamela Anderson, David Hasselhoff—and they actually appear in this film. What was it like having them on set?
That was great, of course. David Hasselhoff didn’t shoot with me but he called me after he finished shooting Baywatch to tell me that he loved India and he wants to do a Hindi movie, and I said it’d be really funny if “the Hoff” does a full-on Bollywood movie. I hope that happens! It would be really fun. He’s very keen on that and he called me to tell me that specifically.
What was the most challenging part about shooting this film?
People think it was a really easy movie to shoot because it’s a fun movie, but it was actually really difficult. Standing on the beach every day for 15 hours in that sun for four months is a lot of work. It takes it out of you; you’re exhausted. At the same time, what would happen to me was that I was flying between Quantico in Montreal and Baywatch in Miami so figuring that out was a lot for me as well.
Yeah, I’ve heard you basically live on an aeroplane.
If you do as many things as I do, you have to live on a plane.
Was it hard to change your accent for the film?
I did make it a little global. I change my accents a lot for my films. If you see in Bajirao Mastani, I kept a really Marathi accent; in Quantico, I have a very American accent because she’s an American girl. In Baywatch, it’s a little mixed, because there’s no need for anyone to know who she is, where she came from. So it’s sort of a global accent—a little bit American, a little bit English. I wanted to keep it very ambiguous. But I always play around with my accents; it’s the easiest thing to do to change your character.
Dwayne Johnson (the Rock) is the centerpiece of the film, besides you, of course. It seems like you and he have a pretty great friendship. What was it like working with Zac Efron and the rest of the cast?
The cast is, first of all, so good looking; it was really annoying. You look at them and you’re like, “Oh God, please, can someone be out of shape here?” But they were really wonderful. Dwayne was also our producer of the film and he was just super wonderful, very encouraging. I knew him before the movie, I’d met him a couple of times, we have the same agency, so we knew each other but shooting the film itself was so great. The whole cast came together, sort of like a family. It was lovely.
Hollywood vs. Bollywood—what are the differences to you, shooting Indian films versus this one?
Actually, it’s not very different, at least not the Bollywood that I know. The entertainment business in India has become so global in terms of the way we make movies. The science of the movies is the same. The only difference to me is everyone is always on time here, and we are at least 15 minutes late. It took me a lot of adjusting to try to be as punctual as everyone else. It’s that Indian Standard Time, which we love.
