After 22 years, Priyanka Chopra Jonas gets paid as much as her male co-star on Citadel

AUSTIN, Texas – Bollywood-to-Hollywood transplant Priyanka Chopra Jonas has been an actress for more than 20 years, but her new globetrotting spy drama Citadel is the first time she has been paid the same as her male co-star.

The 40-year-old actress revealed this while talking about the big-budget science-fiction action series at the South By Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, in April.

Debuting on Prime Video on Friday, the six-episode show begins with the collapse of a global spy agency known as Citadel.

Two of its top agents – Nadia Sinh (Chopra Jonas) and Mason Kane (Richard Madden) – escape with their lives, but have their memories erased in the process.

And when their old nemesis resurfaces, Mason must get Nadia to remember who she is and join him on another mission to save the world.

Chopra Jonas says the series – produced by Anthony and Joseph Russo, the brothers behind superhero smash Avengers: Endgame (2019) – is “truly ambitious and one of a kind”.

This is because it launches a multi-series global franchise, with this first season paving the way for local-language spin-offs set in India, Mexico and the Italian Alps.

And key players in the Indian instalment have already been announced, with 35-year-old Bollywood megastar Varun Dhawan named as the lead.

Citadel will be predominantly in English, “but our characters travel the world and we will have local shows, one in India and one in Italy, with many more a possibility”, says Chopra Jonas, who starred in Bollywood hits such as the romance films Andaaz (2003) and Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004), and made her Hollywood debut with thriller series Quantico (2015 to 2018).

“That is true globalisation,” says the star, who is married to American pop singer Nick Jonas, 30. They have a one-year-old daughter, Malti.

That a major American studio is backing this shows how far Hollywood has come, she believes. “It’s not just about the way you look. In entertainment, diversity is also about the language you use and the country that you grew up in.”

Noting that the Oscars had awarded Best Picture to a film most people watched with subtitles, the South Korean comedy drama Parasite (2019), she says this is a new era for non-English-speaking actors.

As a Hindi-speaking performer, she never thought Hindi content could find a broader global audience until the advent of streaming platforms and the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to viewers discovering more kinds of shows.

“Now, I’ve watched Iranian, Korean, Italian and French shows. I don’t speak the language, but the acceptance of being able to watch entertainment with subtitles is such a joy for me,” Chopra Jonas says.

Citadel is also a milestone because the actress was compensated as well as co-star Madden, the Scottish actor who helmed the political thriller Bodyguard (2018).

“I’ve been working in the entertainment industry for 22 years, and I have done 70-plus features and two TV shows, but Citadel was the first time I had pay parity with my male co-actor.”

She believes Ms Jennifer Salke – the head of Amazon Studios, which is co-producing the series – may have played a role.

“I wonder: Did that happen because one of the very few female decision-makers in Hollywood was the one I had a contract with?” Chopra Jonas says.

But although she thinks women should have equal opportunity, she has also learnt the importance of not working so hard that one burns out, as she did in her 20s.

Women “deal with a lot more of that pressure” to maintain a work-life balance.

In Jonas, she has “an incredibly supportive partner who is the wind beneath my wings. We both balance each other’s lives and careers, but that’s not everyone’s reality”, the actress observes.

Setting aside time for family is “not an excuse to get out of work, because I’m a hard worker”, she adds. “But as I’ve gotten older, I value it a lot more. I know I come back to work better when I have taken time for myself and my family.”

Citadel premieres on Prime Video on Friday.