American Pie

Priyanka Chopra sets out to conquer new shores with her lead role in Quantico

I caught the first episode of Quantico in the strangest of places: Siem Reap in Cambodia (home to the fabulous Angkor Wat and other equally amazing temples). And such are the quirks of television scheduling that I saw it several days before it was aired in India. (And no, unlike some critics in India, I didn't obsess needlessly about Priyanka Chopra's accent: she sounds exactly how an Indian who has spent time in America does. So people, stop with the hyperventilating already!)

So, what did I think of it? Well, it's a good show, sharp, pacy, and full of surprises, which borrows heavily from such series as How To Get Away With Murder, Homeland, and even Grey's Anatomy, but still manages to write its own grammar. I won't say any more about the plot in case you kill me for the spoilers, but by now surely everyone knows that the story revolves around a half-Indian half-American FBI agent called Alex Parrish, who is framed for the most dreaded terrorist attack on US soil after 9/11 (and she can only clear her name by finding the real culprit who is one of her classmates from the FBI training academy at Quantico.)

Alex Parrish is, of course, played by Priyanka Chopra. Many have wondered why Chopra decided to risk her superstardom in India by choosing to play the lead in an American TV series. (And shock all of India in the bargain by, spoiler alert, having sex in the front seat of a car with a virtual stranger within the first few minutes of the show.) After all, she is one of the biggest film stars India has ever produced. Why on earth would she want to go and start afresh in American network television, as a relative unknown? Why jeopardize a sure thing by betting on the unknown?

Well, according to Chopra herself, she hasn't given up on Bollywood. She still flies back to Mumbai over the weekends to shoot for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's next magnum opus, Bajirao Mastani (and looks suitably sensational in the trailer, by the way) that releases later this year. And she will continue to work in Hindi movies, alongside her American venture, living 'on a plane' because she is, as she told Jimmy Kimmel, a complete 'nomad'.

That might well be the case. But equally, there is no denying that given how Bollywood works, at 33, Chopra has only a few leading-lady years left in her. After that, it will be mostly quirky, small-budget movies (what the Bollywood wallahs call multiplex cinema) that will come her way.

So Chopra, who has always had her head sown on right, must have done a quick cost-benefit analysis. What is better: making smaller and fewer movies in India; or trying to break into American network television, which is in a red-hot creative phase? And who knows, maybe getting a free pass to Hollywood, once she achieves the same kind of stardom in America.

So when a big network like ABC came knocking with a slew of scripts, 'no' wasn't really an option. And of all the ones she read, Quantico was the one that appealed to her. So much so that she even did the unthinkable for a movie star: she agreed to audition for the role (no doubt she had them at 'hello').

But even if we leave rational decision-making aside, there must have been something about making a new beginning in an entirely new industry that appealed to Chopra at a more visceral, emotional level. She's never been afraid of taking chances (remember the single she cut with Pitbull?), and this one must have seemed irresistible at this stage of her life.

But the more important question surely is: why is an American network like ABC making a show that revolves around an Indian (okay half-Indian) character?

Well, clearly the Indian-American demographic is now important enough to merit leading ladies and men who look like them. And happily, the casting has now gone beyond stereotypes like science nerds (Raj Koothrappali in The Big Bang Theory) or maths geniuses (Amita Ramanujan in Numbers) or even over-achieving doctors (Mindy Lahiri in The Mindy Project). With Priyanka Chopra playing a Carrie Mathison-type character (minus the bipolar stuff, thankfully) in Quantico, the FBI agent who pulls no punches, the Indian-American TV star has finally moved beyond the tires old tropes of typecasting.

But don't pop the champagne just yet. We still have miles to go, as indeed does Priyanka. She discovered this the hard way when her own network ran a promotional video for Quantico, which featured shots of Priyanka Chopra winning the Miss World contest. There was only one problem: the Miss World featured in the clips was Yukta Mookhey! Clearly, to some American eyes, one Indian beauty queen looks much like the other.

Maybe Quantico and Priyanka Chopra can change all that. And judging by the first episode, she's well on her way to do just that.

All about the girl

What is it about flawed, damaged heroines that so fascinates us?

From the moment I encountered Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo, the first book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, I fell hopelessly in love. Her punk-rock chic; her take-no-prisoners attitude; her complete refusal to let life keep her down; and, of course, her dragon tattoo: all of it added up to a fictional heroine like no other.

Target of an abusive father, child victim of a cruel social services system, rape survivor, Salander refused to let these knock-out punches cripple her. Instead, she reinvented herself as Wasp, the mother of all hackers, took diabolical revenge on those who had hurt her, and by the end of the third book has established herself as a reclusive millionaire who lives in the shadows, emerging only when it suits her.

For me, the appeal of Salander lay in the fact that she was the Ultimate Survivor. So I guess it was, in some way, inevitable that she should survive the death of Larsson and reappear in our lives (and our bookshelves) in The Girl In The Spider’s Web, the new book in the series, written by David Lagercrantz.

I am always a bit leery when other writers take over the task of telling the stories of characters that were invented by someone else. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation when I first started reading Lagercrantz. Could he possibly do justice to Stieg Larsson? Would his Salander have the same resonance?

Well, I am halfway through Spider’s Web and I am happy to report that Lagercrantz succeeds on both counts. Salander remains the same feisty if flawed character who captured our imagination when she first burst on to the literary scene. She has the same fierce intelligence, the same thirst for revenge, the same scary talent, and yes, the same demons that possessed her since she was a child. For all the damage – both physical and psychological – inflicted on her, she remains undaunted, picking herself off the floor time and again, and pressing on.

But as I read about her latest adventure, I began to wonder: what is it about damaged women in fiction that fascinates us so? Not the soppy heroines, who are always mooning over the hero. Not the good girls who never put a foot wrong. Not the fairy princesses who get their happily ever after. They are not the ones who resonate with us; on the contrary, they tend to fade from memory the moment you turn the page. It is the women with failings and flaws, the women with all the frailty and strength that characterizes the human condition, who never release their hold on our imagination.

A quick check with my friends threw up several names on this list. Patricia Cornwall’s Kay Scarpetta, who cut up dead bodies for a living; Catwoman, who is part jewel thief and part superheroine; Lady Macbeth, whose overweening ambition powers the play; Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent, who metamorphoses from a beautiful young woman to a terrible creature bent on revenge; Annalise Keating, the scary super-lawyer who knows all about How To Get Away With Murder.

All good choices. But my top five list looks a little different, presented here in chronological order:

·         Becky Sharp: The name says it all; this is a woman who has a sharp eye out for the main chance. In an age when a woman was judged by birth and money, Becky had neither. What she did have was beauty, wit, charm and drive. In William Makepeace Thackeray’s world, she was the anti-heroine, the fair symbol of vanity. In today’s world, she would have been running a multinational corporation.

·         Anna Karenina: The dissatisfied, bored wife is a fairly routine trope of fiction. But Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina rises above the banal with her passionate, if doomed, love for Count Vronsky. There is something infuriating about her at times, and there are occasions when you want to reach into the pages and give her a good shaking. But that’s only because you have become so invested in her story.

    Carrie Mathison: She’s a CIA analyst, she’s bipolar, she’s in love with the man she hunting down, she’s a mother with zero maternal feelings, she’s the only woman who can save the Homeland. Impossibly improbable scenario? Yes. But Clare Danes makes it work.

·         Amy Dunne: By the time you realize that she’s a full-on psycho, you have already succumbed to the charm of Amy. You stare in horrified fascination as she does the most unspeakable of things. And there’s a just tiny part of you that admires her for getting away with it.

·        Claire Underwood: As the ice-queen wife to the cold conniving Frank Underwood in House of Cards, Claire’s control on her emotions is as tight as the fitted dresses she wears. Played by Robin Wright in the American series, she is the Lady Macbeth of our times, all ruthless ambition and an eye to the main chance, but with just a soupcon of vulnerability that makes her a real character rather than a prototype.