Priyanka Chopra Jonas on dealing with father’s dying: ‘Never actually examined or handled my grief’
Image Source : INSTAGRAM/PRIYANKACHOPRA, FILE PIC Priyanka Chopra Jonas on dealing with father’s dying: ‘Never actually examined or handled my grief’
In her just lately launched memoir Unfinished, actor-producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas has revealed she fell into despair following her father’s dying, a interval that lasted for round 5 years until she made a acutely aware determination to maneuver from “a world of gray back into a world of vibrant color”. The 38-year-old actor’s father, Dr Ashok Chopra, a doctor within the Indian Army, died on June 10, 2013, after a protracted battle with most cancers on the age of 62.
Chopra Jonas says she used work as remedy, placing her grief and “a piece of my soul” into the sports activities drama “Mary Kom”, which launched in 2014. She was set to start out capturing for the movie, produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, days after her father’s passing.
“Five days after Dad died, the day following my father’s chautha, ‘Mary Kom’ was scheduled to begin shooting, and although the film’s producer, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, offered to postpone the start date, the sense of duty and discipline I’d inherited from my father and his twenty-seven years in the military wouldn’t allow me to accept his offer.”
“As always, work was my therapy. I put all of my grief and a piece of my soul into that character and that film. It’s what drove me and it’s what allowed me to continue functioning,” the actor writes in “Unfinished”, printed by Penguin Random House India.
Chopra Jonas additionally acknowledges her “Krrish” co-star Hrithik Roshan, who in 2005-06 “used his connections at Air India” to rearrange for her father’s fast flight to London from the place he was transferred onto a flight to New York for additional therapy at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. After her father’s dying, she says she did not wish to really feel her overpowering grief, so “I walled myself off emotionally”.
This, Chopra Jonas provides, had been her methodology for dealing with ache ever since her boarding college days. Her mom, Madhu Chopra, additionally a former doctor within the Indian Army, advocated the actor discuss to a counselor.
Although she tried a number of therapists, she says, she by no means discovered one who was proper for her. The household, she says, tried to make sense of the grief on a visit to Turks and Caicos in December 2013.
“Beyond those few conversations with my family, though, I never really examined or dealt with my grief. Instead, I tried to power through. I was doing my best to be resilient, but the fact is that I was burying my grief rather than coming to terms with it.”
Almost three years later, she moved to New York to shoot the second season of the ABC collection “Quantico”, her first Hollywood venture. “I imagined I might leave behind the sadness I was still feeling when I left Canada. Instead, I fell into a depression. While I thought I had powered through my grief, I was still carrying it with me, apparently keeping up my end of the deal to hold it close wherever I went,” Chopra Jonas writes.
After months of cancelling dinner plans with associates and dwelling in a cocoon, she spent New Year’s Eve of 2017 at greatest good friend’s place. “I didn’t know exactly how to move from a world of gray back into a world of vibrant color, but one day I figured out one simple thing I could do: I could stop hiding and reengage with life.” The actor additionally addresses her relationship with social media, saying she has “started picking my battles”.
Looking again on the 2017 costume controversy in Berlin when she was trolled on-line for being ‘inappropriately dressed’ when she met PM Narendra Modi, who was then on a four-nation journey to Germany, Spain, Russia and France, she says she had “presented myself respectfully”.
“Because I was promoting ‘Baywatch’ that day, I was in a dress, not a sari. It was knee-length, high-necked, and long-sleeved. When we posted the photos to social media, there was a furor around the fact that I was meeting with the prime minister with my legs exposed. It was one of the first times I became global news, and I swear that was not the way I wanted to make global news. I was angry and confused.”
“My response to the anger was to take a picture of my mom and me out at dinner that night in our short skirts and with our legs crossed, and to post it online with the caption ‘It runs in the family’.Cancel culture and social media shaming have in many ways stopped her from having the meaningful conversations with followers,” says Chopra Jonas.
“I’ve come to see that there are times when you should speak up, and times when it’s better not to.So I’ve started picking my battles.” She additionally discusses rumours about her a lot publicised cosmetic surgery in 2001, which she says she underwent to deal with a polyp in her nasal cavity after having bother respiration.
“While shaving off the polyp, the doctor also accidentally shaved the bridge of my nose and the bridge collapsed. When it was time to remove the bandages and the condition of my nose was revealed, Mom and I were horrified.My original nose was gone.” The expertise was a public affair and shortly she was being referred to as ‘Plastic Chopra’.
“Following the polypectomy I had several corrective surgeries, and over time, my nose normalized. While it took a few years of seeing a stranger gazing back at me every time I looked in the mirror, I’ve gotten accustomed to this face.”
She additionally writes she was dropped from two large motion pictures — her “very first acting jobs” — after the producers heard rumours she seemed completely different post-surgery.
