There’s no stopping Priyanka Chopra.
After bursting into the American television scene with ABC’s well-received Quantico, the actress was promptly signed up to play a key-role in the upcoming Baywatch reboot.
Now, after a series of interviews and profiles by some of the most prestigious TV-show hosts and publications, Chopra has made it to the coveted 100 Most Influential People list by Time Magazine, along with RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, tennis-star Sania Mirza, Flipkart co-founders Binny and Sachin Bansal, Google CEO Sundar Pichai. However, Chopra is the only one amongst them to be featured in the cover of the magazine’s current edition. There are six covers to this edition, which feature Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicki Minaj, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Christine Lagarde, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.Chopra is the fifth Bollywood celebrity to have made it to the Time cover. Before her, Parveen Babi and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan had been featured on the cover. Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan are the male actors who have made it to the magazine’s cover in the past.
In an interview with Time, the actress said, “When I was very young, I was 19 and I was doing the first few movies, I remember that my dates weren’t working out. My scheduling wasn’t working out for a movie with a very big actor. And the producer said, ‘Well, she can’t work it out, it’s fine, we’ll just cast someone else. Or, you know what? I’ll launch a new girl because girls are replaceable.’ I didn’t understand it then. But I think subconsciously it really worked on my mind, and I started picking up parts which were strong, which were not just the damsel in distress waiting for someone to rescue me. As much as I like being rescued. Every girl does … Now 13, 15 years later, whatever, I think that the movies that I do, I’m irreplaceable and the boys are replaceable.”
The magazine, which is known to roll out its annual list, also got Chopra’s Baywatch co-star Dwayne Johnson to write his thoughts on her. Johnson wrote, “Before ever meeting Priyanka Chopra, I had heard her name coming out of Bollywood and was impressed: she was beautiful, talented, had made nearly 50 movies, earned multiple awards—a massive star. When we connected around the time she started Quantico, we immediately hit it off. She has drive, ambition, self-respect, and she knows there’s no substitute for hard work.”
He also called her impact ‘invaluable.’ “Now I’m lucky enough to be working with her on Baywatch. It’s an amazing time to watch as she pierces the U.S. market. She has an ability to inspire people to do more and achieve more. When I look at her success from the 50,000-ft. view and see everything that Priyanka has already done, is currently doing and has the desire and the bandwidth to do, I can see that her impact is going to be invaluable.”
