Priyanka Chopra recalls her dad put bars on windows after she returned to India from US at 16: ‘One of the boys jumped…’

Actor Priyanka Chopra has revealed that when she returned to India from the US at the age of 16, her late father Ashok Chopra had to put bars on her windows. In a new interview, Priyanka also said that her father was ‘paranoid’ after a boy jumped onto her balcony at night. Recalling the ‘two years’ after she came back to India, Priyanka said that she was ‘arrogant, vain’ and thought she was ‘invincible’. (Also Read | Priyanka Chopra plays with father in snow in unseen childhood pic as she remembers him on his birth anniversary)

After the incident, Ashok asked Priyanka to ‘wear loose clothes or Indian clothes.’ The actor recalled that as she didn’t have ‘any loose clothes’ she would wear her father’s favourite shirts, tie them up, open buttons and pair them with jeans in ‘this small town in India’. Priyanka recalled everyone would talk about the way she dressed.

Speaking on The Howard Stern Show, Priyanka 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.”

She also added, “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.”

Priyanka is the eldest of two siblings. She is very close to her mother Dr Madhu Chopra and her brother Siddharth Chopra. Her dad Ashok Chopra died of cancer in 2013. Priyanka is married to singer Nick Jonas. They stay in Los Angeles with their daughter Malti Marie Chopra Jonas.