Priyanka Chopra’s ‘paranoid’ father installed bars on her windows, confiscated her jeans when she returned to India with ‘American hormones’

She said, “My dad was super paranoid because he sent to America a 12-year-old with braids and trying to be cool, so I got my hair blown out that was the only thing I had ever done, come back after all of these American hormones and the food. I come back a little bit more woman than my dad would have anticipated at 16. When I went back to India and I was in this small town and I was peacocking like I peacocked in my American high school I had boys follow me home. One of them jumped into my balcony at night. That’s why my dad was like, ‘F*** this, bars, all your jeans are confiscated, you are going to wear Indian suits, nothing happening. I had a driver drive me everywhere, he was freaked out. I get it, but then my career happened. I feel so bad for my dad.”

Priyanka admitted that she was ‘arrogant and vain’ when she returned to India. “I didn’t understand the gravity of it. I thought I was invincible. I think about it now. How did I get away with this s*** that I did? But it was this invincible thing of, ‘I can get away with anything’. But that day when somebody was outside my bedroom. He was outside my balcony and I saw him and I screamed and went to my dad. My dad came, he jumped and he went away. The next day my dad was like, ‘You need rules’. I was so arrogant and vain in those two years of my life. Especially when I came back to India. Suddenly there was this equity on me which I didn’t have in American high school where the girls were bullying me,” she said.

In a recent interview with Hoda Kotb on the Today Show, Priyanka looked back on how ostracised she felt when she first moved to the US. She said that because she didn’t know her way around a cafeteria, she’d eat chips alone in the toilet. Priyanka is now one of the most widely recognised Indian celebrities on the planet. She recently starred in the Prime Video spy series Citadel, alongside Richard Madden.