- She started out studying aeronautical engineering,
which I did not know,
and went on to become Miss World, okay.
One of "Times" most influential people,
one of "Forbes" most powerful women, and a Jonas.
I'm just saying that's a lot of checks.
It's a lot of boxes she's checked.
Her new memoir is called "Unfinished" great title.
Let's say hello to Miss Priyanka Chopra Jonas!
(upbeat music)
Hello!
- Hi Kelly, how are you?
- I'm so good.
Your husband was talking smack on our group texts
the other day, our "Voice" group text.
He was like, "You losers ready?
"I'm gonna come and beat"
I was like, all right, Jonas.
But I've seen you a couple of times on set.
We never get to talk too long.
'Cause we're always running for the camera or whatever.
But do you like coming?
Do you enjoy it?
I loved how our compound used to be and we could all hang.
That's no longer.
- I just miss human interaction.
I swear the first time I thought I'd be seeing you
on your show would be on that couch.
And like, we'd be sitting together, you know,
having a drink, talking,
like we usually do whenever we meet.
And you know, it's a weird world.
And I love coming to the set of "The Voice".
I was actually a fan of the show
before Nick even came onto the show.
I'd watched it so many times.
I told him when he needs to like,
how much time he needs to sort of take
before he turns the chair and stuff like that.
- I love it, I love it.
Well, do you remember this moment?
Because I do.
You helped me out.
So do you remember that?
- I do remember that.
You were gonna go back on stage
and this was the variety of women-
- Power of Women, yeah.
- Power lunch or something, wasn't it.
- Yeah. - Power of Women.
- And that was the first time we met, and you were so nice.
Literally, I was like, she was so nice,
she's such a girl's girl.
I was sweating, I had just gotten off stage performing.
I was about to go do another thing.
And I was like, oh my God, I'm so sweaty.
And I had nothing, and you totally touched me up.
Has there been another time-
- But it's also the Indian in me, I think.
It's a very cultural thing to me
to be all up in your business, and be like,
let me just get you, come here, come here,
show me your face, clean you up, all right, go on ahead.
It's very cultural.
- Well, it's very Southern as well, like where I'm from.
So I thought it was really, really nice.
Is there another time-
- I'm glad you did.
- Oh, I loved it.
Well, I'm a major extrovert, if you haven't noticed.
So I love extroverts.
And you and Nick had your second anniversary recently.
That's amazing.
I feel like sometimes when couples are together,
you start to like be like each other, are y'all that yet?
- Well, I have become a lot neater than I used to be.
I put my shoes together now,
'cause he puts his shoes together.
And I don't wanna be the one who's a mess.
I eat on the dining table now, which I hated doing.
I used to love eating on the couch in my blanket, you know?
But he likes to sit on the dining table.
So I've started becoming a little bit like that.
Yeah, so I think I'm the one who's changed.
- No, I love that though.
Totally, his personality, I would have totally
expected him to be like a clean freak, yeah.
- Even his closet, like all the hangers
are sort of distanced together.
And mine's like a drawer full of just clothes.
- Oh my God, I love that, I love that.
All right, we're back.
And I was watching, I almost made us stop
because you had like a sneezing attack
or something I could see.
But I almost held off-
- No, I had a-
I was drinking, I'm not crying.
I was drinking some water and it went down the wrong side.
- Oh my God, I was like, somebody help her,
but you couldn't hear me.
And I was like, I hate this virtual world.
I was like, she's choking!
Anyway, we've got Priyanka Chopra Jonas on Skype, y'all,
and she's alive and well.
- I'm okay, I'm okay.
- I'm okay, well congratulations on the book.
This is amazing.
I mean, coming from a writer
that writes about her own life sometimes,
that is a very hard thing to do sometimes
with certain subject matters.
So was it hard for you to write about your own life?
- It definitely was.
I actually always wanted to write a book.
And I thought that the easiest thing
would be to write a memoir,
because you know your life, you know?
But it's not because you end up dealing with
and talking about things
that you kind of buried in your past
and haven't thought about for a long time.
And I wrote it at a time which was daunting as well.
I wrote it in 2020 during quarantine,
because I had the luxury of the time to write it.
So I was emotional, vulnerable
and kind of reflected in the book.
It's so much more personal than I ever intended it to be.
- Yeah, 'cause writing for me,
especially when I'm writing songs about my own,
it's kind of therapeutic for me, and it can be overwhelming.
- Totally.
- But was it therapeutic for you?
Did you kind of like go man, I forgot that even happened.
- I think it was healing. - Oh, that's so good.
- Very much.
So I feel like I've been running so fast in my life.
2020 was 20 years in the entertainment business for me.
So I realized that I'd only
been running from one job to the next.
As you know, in our jobs you don't know what the...
It's not consistent like a normal job.
You have to figure out what the next job is,
to where your check's coming from.
Like there's a constant hustle.
And I'd been running to make sure
that I had a consistent career for such a long time.
I didn't think about a lot of things, or deal with things
that may have been hard, or rejections or failures.
And writing a book really helps you do that.
So it was super healing for me.
- That's incredible.
What a blessing. - It really was.
- Yeah, you write a lot about your childhood in India.
So what's going on with this picture?
I love this photo.
What is that?
What's happening?
- I was a year, I think, a year and a half.
But this is me wearing my dad's military uniform.
I was obsessed with my father.
I wanted to be him.
He had long legs, he was tall,
he was funny, he was charming.
And this was his uniform.
And I just always used to dress myself.
I used to wear his shoes, I used to where his beret.
That's how I felt closest to him.
- That's amazing.
That's an awesome relationship.
Well, tell me about the plan
your brother had to get you out of the house.
That was my favorite part, like reading about this was,
his trick to get you out of the house
kind of catapulted your career, right?
- It kind of really set me on this track.
I had just moved back to India from the States.
And there were only two other rooms in my parents' house.
And you know, my brother's room was kind of given to me,
because I was a 16 year old teenager at that point.
And obviously, I didn't argue with that.
But he wanted his room back because my mom had set him up
in the hallway between the two rooms.
And I had just gotten some photos taken,
like, you know mall shots,
the soft focus, like hand on your face kind of pictures?
And he took those pictures at all 10 years old,
and told my mom, took the magazine
in which there was a commercial
for the Miss India pageant. And he was like, "You know what?
"Why don't you send her in for this?
"'Cause then she'll have to go away to Mumbai."
In his ten-year-old mind was,
that was his way of getting his room back.
And I went into the pageant, won it,
and that like triggered my entire career,
as I know it right now.
- Was that even a dream of yours, to do a pageant?
- No, I never even knew that normal girls could be
in a pageant, and that's how it all happened.
Crazy, yeah. - That's amazing.
So I read you were kicked out of a couple of museums
which like, I liked you before, Priyanka,
but I really loved reading about you before this interview.
'Cause how were you kicked out of museums?
- 'Cause you try and touch the "Starry Night".
I mean, you can't try and touch "Starry Night"
that's like preserved art and- - You put your hands on it?
- Yes. - Oh no.
- I was kicked out because I touched it.
And alarms and people, and my family was embarrassed.
Even at the Louvre, I tried to take a picture
with the "Mona Lisa"
which wasn't allowed and I got kicked out.
It was like, what was wrong with me and art?
- Those are like really huge museums, like prestigious.
- Yeah, not even like the little ones.
- Yeah, no, hey, that's kind of cooler though.
You're kicked out of The Louvre, like that's kinda cool.
I wanna ask you about something that you said
at the Miss World Competition.
'Cause I loved it, I fell in love with it.
The contestants were asked
to come up with questions for others to answer,
which is a lot of pressure, I feel like.
I kept thinking before I read yours,
what would I have said?
Like, what would I have asked?
And this was so beautifully asked,
"If ignorance is bliss, why do we seek knowledge?"
Like, my joke in life is always like,
which pill was it in the matrix?
It was like, I should have taken the other pill.
I should have taken the red pill.
You know what I'm saying?
Or the blue one, whichever one was ignorance.
I was like, maybe that would have been better.
And that's always my private joke to myself.
And I love that. So what does that mean to you?
And why did you ask that?
- Well, it was such a mean thing to do,
now that I think about it.
I was like, why did I have to write
such a tough question for someone else to answer?
But it actually was my question
during the Miss India Pageant.
And I remember saying something like,
if ignorance was bliss, I wouldn't know
what loving, caring, and sharing is or some such.
But when I wrote that down,
I was like, my mind had gotten blank.
It was a Miss World contest.
And I was just like terrified.
And I just wrote whatever I remembered.
But she did a great job with it.
But now in retrospect, it was just such a mean thing to do.
- Yeah, I was like you are seriously competitive,
asking someone that question.
You're like, I'm gonna trip her up.
I'm gonna trip her up.
I'm taking that crown. - So mean!
I'm so mean.
- No, it's an amazing question.
It's an important one too,
'cause it is like such a thought provoking question,
to where I think it's one of those
great conversations starters, like a dinner or something.
But everybody, Priyanka's new book is called "Unfinished"
and it's out now, you gotta check it out.