Priyanka Chopra recalls shooting in a chiffon saree in snowy Switzerland: ‘Had a hot water bucket under my saree, my teeth were chattering’

Priyanka said, “I did not grow up romantasizing the blowing hair and the sarees. I loved the movies but I didn’t grow up thinking ki mujhe sirf slow motion mein bhagna hai (That I just want to run in slow motion). I wasn’t a fan of the movies when I grew up. My father was a fan of music so I grew up with lots of music in our house… Lata Mangeshkar, Beatles to Sahir Ludhianvi’s poetry, it was a very musical home. My dad was a joker, so he would mimic and all but I never grew up thinking ‘oh my God this is amazing’. I used to love MD and Sri ma’am, ofcourse, girl crushes forever. I think I thought that’s not real, human being don’t do that. That’s not a job. Wo to Sridevi karti hai, tum thodi na kar sakti hi. (Sridevi can do that, not you). It was never an aspiration or ambition either.”

Cut to the time when it was time for Priyanka to do the same glamorous looking shots and she realised that glamorous is not as easy as it may appear. Priyanka recalled the time when, while shooting in snow-clad mountains of Switzerland, she had to stand in a bucket of hot water, dressed in a chiffon saree, while her co-star was fully dressed in warm clothes.

“So when I started doing it and for the first time, oh I will never forget this, I was in a chiffon saree, in Jungfrau, Switzerland, in a green saree. Obviously the guy is dressed in head to toe fur and I am in a blouse and chiffon saree and I was standing in a bucket of hot water for the close-up. And I am saying the lines like this, (chatters teeth) and on top of it there is a helicopter above because we are taking a helicopter shot,” Priyanka recalled fondly.

She added, “My co-actor is trying to keep me warm and there is a hot water bucket under my saree. Not glamour guys, not glamorous. So, for me, the glamour of the movies became recognizing my characters, understanding these girls. It looks beautiful, and even now I want to have my hair blowing… The glamour of it was taken away from me very quickly and I just started enjoying the medium of work and the possibility of what you can do with the characters.”

Priyanka was last seen in Bollywood in 2019 film The Sky Is Pink and later on Netlix in Hindi-English bilingual film The White Tiger. She will soon be seen in Farhan Akhtar’s Jee Le Zaraa, co-starring Katrina Kaif and Alia Bhatt.