Opinion | Priyanka Chopra Jonas: Why India’s International Star’s Report Card Needs Some Good Scores

Much happens in Citadel, the Amazon Prime Video science fiction action drama series starring Richard Madden and India’s very own Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh, respectively. Kane and Sinh are elite spies of an international network predictably called, yes, Citadel. The first of the two episodes available at the moment shows both of them inside a train — with a purpose. They must retrieve a bag of highly enriched uranium from a Russian agent.

Action follows. The train blows up. Both the spies escape death. Time goes by. Kane and Sinh lead vastly different lives without any memory of their past as spies. By the time the second episode ends, the visibly expensive series evolves into an actioner that promises to deliver more exciting moments in the coming episodes.

Seen in one of the leading roles in the series created by Josh Appelbaum, Bryan Oh and David Weil, Priyanka is not the only reason why we watch Citadel. But she is, without question, an important reason why the series has appeal. The actress, now 40, is undoubtedly glamorous. She shares excellent chemistry with Madden, her gifted co-star. She is equally impactful in the action sequences, a feature of the series that targets the average Amazon Prime subscriber looking for some cool fun during the weekend.

Hollywood has produced numerous first-rate actioners, whose stories reveal the writer’s ability to surprise the viewer with admirable consistency. And, here is the inescapable fact. Citadel is not one of them. However, the series allows Priyanka to showcase her talent on television once again.

FINE ACTING ABILITY

Anyone who has followed Priyanka’s career closely knows she is a gifted and versatile actress. Her highlights from Hindi films include her role in Madhur Bhandarkar’s flawed but realistic drama Fashion (2008) in which she is a small-town girl who enters the world of modelling. In Vishal Bhardwaj’s brilliant 2011 black comedy 7 Khoon Maaf, she is a woman who commits a series of murders and does away with her husbands.

She is outstanding as the autistic woman in Anurag Basu’s sensitive romantic comedy Barfi! (2012). She plays the boxer-protagonist of Omung Kumar’s biographical sports drama Mary Kom (2014) with admirable conviction. And, she makes the maximum impact among the main characters with her performance as Kashibai, the first wife of Peshwa Bajirao I, in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s period epic Bajirao Mastani (2015).

Her film-going fans might believe that the list of her good performances in India could have been much longer. Those who do aren’t wrong.

LOOKING WESTWARD

Priyanka has been doing a considerable amount of work in the West. Many of her American fans still relate to her as the ‘Quantico girl’ Alex Parrish, the protagonist of Joshua Safran’s thriller drama Quantico that aired on American Broadcasting Company (ABC) for three seasons (2015-2018). The first South Asian to play the leading role in an American drama series, a significant achievement, Priyanka’s character of Parrish is an FBI field agent who becomes the suspect in a terrorist attack. The character’s eventful journey through life is the focus of the widely popular series, which helped Priyanka take a big step forward in her career.

Her track record in films, sadly, has not been half as good or popular. She appears in Seth Gordon’s action comedy Baywatch (2017) as Victoria Leeds, the drug dealer-antagonist. It is a strictly passable performance in a film with forgettable weaknesses such as a half-baked script and uninspired direction.

Transgender director Silas Howard’s 2018 drama A Kid Like Jake, a sensitive film with a great idea, shows her as the divorced friend of a couple dealing with their child’s gender non-conformity. Hers is a supporting role in a film dominated by Claire Danes and Jim Parsons, who excel as parents of the child.

In Todd Strauss-Schulson’s genre-bending rom-com Isn’t It Romantic (2019), she appears as a ‘yoga ambassador’. It is, once again, a supporting role with little substance. Her character of the exile program named Sati in Lana Wachowski’s science fiction film The Matrix Resurrections (2021) did not make much of an impact either.

Will Priyanka come into her own in James C Strouse’s upcoming romantic comedy Love Again in which she reportedly plays Mira Ray, a woman who has lost her fiancé? It will be great if she does, considering much of her potential as an actor in films remains unused in the West.

Citadel, in the meantime, is destined to become more popular with time. But the actress needs meatier roles in projects with substance to become that true Indian international star, whose impact as a performer in the West will reside in the memory of the masses forever.

The author, a journalist for three decades, writes on literature and pop culture. Among his books are ‘MSD: The Man, The Leader’, the bestselling biography of former Indian captain MS Dhoni, and the ‘Hall of Fame’ series of film star biographies. Views expressed are personal.

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