Priyanka Chopra is not a Hollywood superstar. Yet.
But she is a force to be reckoned with. This year alone, she was interviewed by every major talk show host from Jimmy Kimmel to Jimmy Fallon. The dramatic Ralph Lauren trench coat she wore to the Met Ball instantly became an Internet meme. She wrapped Season 2 of ABC’s spy thriller Quantico, and her new movie, Baywatch (with The Rock and Zac Efron) releases this week.
For Indians, Priyanka Chopra has long been a household name. The beauty queen turned Bollywood actress has more than 50 films to her credit and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine. I grew up in India watching her blockbuster movies, which aired on TV in between American sitcoms. At the time, I couldn’t imagine a world in which the two collided. The only Indian character on American TV was Apu from The Simpsons: a walking stereotype voiced by a white man.
Over the years, there has been significant progress in terms of diversity–Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling are notable Indian-American showrunners– but that didn’t mean that leading roles were now open to immigrants. Actors of Asian descent were still relegated to stereotypical roles, like “asexual math geek.” With this in mind, I assumed that Chopra’s presence in Hollywood would be minimal, that she would be confined to being in one Guess campaign or one song with Pitbull. She would be exotic background flavor, as many foreign actresses have been.
When I heard the news that she would be the first South Asian to headline a U.S network show, I felt as if something had changed irrevocably. One of our own was on TV playing a character who wasn’t defined by her ethnicity, who wasn’t a stereotypical grocery-store owner or cab driver. Instead, Priyanka Chopra played Alex Parrish, an Indian-American woman with a stubborn will. In the very first scene of Quantico, she has sex with a man in a car. It was a banner moment for every brown girl who grew up in America without seeing complex Indian characters. For all of us who had to make do with watching Bend It Like Beckham for the fifty-seventh time.
Quantico’s unexpected success lead to more breakthroughs for Chopra. She won two People’s Choice awards for her role on the show (the first South Asian actress to do so). She was invited to present at the Oscars. Most importantly, she landed a plum role on the new Baywatch movie. Chopra plays Victoria Leeds, a vixenish entrepreneur who is suspected of using her club as a front for drug-smugglers. She plays her role with plenty of sass, even describing herself as an aspiring Bond villain. It’s the kind of role not usually given to Asian actresses (who, in keeping with racist stereotypes, are much more likely to play submissive good girls onscreen).
Although the movie received dismal reviews overall, Priyanka Chopra’s inclusion in the cast was still significant. To me, Baywatch had always represented an essential piece of American pop culture. I couldn’t imagine a brown-skinned Indian actress running down those iconic beaches, looking as if she belonged. The fact that Chopra had pulled it off was indicative of her savvy, her ability to fit into American culture. Her appearances on Kimmel and Fallon seemed to confirm this: she ate atomic wings and talked about how much she loved New York hot dogs with boundless charm.
I knew it hadn’t always been so easy for her to fit in. Chopra is open about the racism she faced as a high school student in America, where she was called “brownie” and bullied for her ethnicity. In 2013, she received masses of hate mail calling her a Muslim terrorist when one of her songs aired during Thursday Night Football. This made her much more nervous about appearing on American TV. As she put it, “I wasn’t sure if America was ready for a lead that looked like me.”
As it turns out, they were. On May 15th, ABC ordered a third season of Quantico, proving that Chopra has serious staying power. And she isn’t the only one: fellow Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone is already following her lead. Padukone has done the talk-show circuit, the rounds of Cannes. In January, Padukone appeared in the latest instalment of the xXx franchise: Return of Xander Cage.
It’s not enough. The amount of representation minorities receive in mainstream TV and movies is nowhere near enough. All the existing reflections of ourselves fall short in one way or another. (Fewer shows about an awkward Indian boy dating a carefree white girl, please.) But one of the things — the very few things — that makes me optimistic about the future is that I no longer have just one brown person in showbiz to applaud, criticize, root for.
White supremacists are right to be afraid: their stranglehold on the culture cannot last. The people have spoken. And the people are diverse.
