Quantico star and voice of Kamala Khan Priyanka Chopra is on the cover of the June/July Complex. In an in-depth interview with the magazine, conducted on the Quantico set, Chopra discussed her career aspirations and why she was drawn to working on the ABC show. Perhaps most controversially, because people love to get riled up about Bond casting rumors, Chopra talked about traditional gender roles in film and what part she’d most like to take on in the Bond franchise. Via Complex:
In another lull between takes, conversation turns toward her appetite for stunts. She’s thrilled for her upcoming role as the icy villain in Baywatch, a part originally envisioned for a man (“another barrier broken,” she winks), and everyone agrees she’d make a great Bond Girl. “I get that all the time,” she says with faux exasperation. “But fuck that—I wanna be Bond.”
Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with playing a Bond girl, and I don’t think from this conversation that Chopra does, either; it would just be nice if “Bond girl” was one of a greater variety of roles offered for women in Hollywood. Her Bond comment came as part of an interview in which she discussed the boxes Hollywood puts people into, and casting Chopra or another woman as Bond would certainly disrupt that adherence to convention. The actress also said that the desire to flout American audiences’ expectations for her was one of the reasons she was so excited for her part in Quantico:
I was very sure I did not want to be the stereotype of what Indian people are seen as, which is Bollywood, and henna. That’s all great! It’s what we are, and I love it. I love saris; I love music; I love henna; I love dancing, but that’s not all we are.
[…] I wanted to be seen as just an actor, not because of my ethnicity or where I come from. I think global entertainment needs to become like that. It needs to be about the best person for the job rather than what you look like or where you come from. And I wanted to be one of the first people to take a step in that direction.
[…] There are so many Indian actors who have crossed over, and have done a lot of work in the West, but they’ve always been made to speak like Apu [from The Simpsons]. I want to be able to break the stereotype of what Indian people or people of South Asian descent are supposed to be. Nobody’s supposed to be anything. You can be whoever you want. And I want young people to see that.
You should head over to Complex to read the full interview. Chopra’s a badass, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of her.
(via Jezebel)
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