She’s been called one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes Magazine. Actress and activist Priyanka Chopra is undoubtedly one of the biggest stars of her generation, using her platform to invoke change and challenge the way we think. While Priyanka has always been an outspoken advocate for diversity and inclusion, in this interview, she’s opening up about why it’s personal to her. For more information on her latest project, check out: Skinclusion.com
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If you become a victim of it, there will always be burdens that hold you back. And I choose not to be a victim of any anything bad that's ever happened to me, including like my father's death, including racism, including um sexism, including lack of opportunity, anything, I will not be a victim. I choose to, you know, take my future in my own hands and mobilize myself in a way where I don't have that problem anymore. Hi, I'm Doctor Oz and this is the Doctor Oz Podcast. She's been called one of the most powerful women in the World by Formers magazine and was featured on the cover of Time magazines coveted Time one Dred issue hundred Most Powerful People in the World. It's a big deal for more. Miss World actress and activist Prianka Chopra Jonas now they just got married is undoubtedly one of the biggest stars of her generation, and she recently captivated all of the world with her wedding to singer Nick Jonas and her famous friendship with Megan Marco. She's known for using our platform to invoke change and challenge the way we think, and while PA has always been an outspoken advocate for diversity and inclusion. Today, she's opening up about White's personal to her. So let me start a prackup with a similarity we have. We were both raised by doctors. Both your parents were physicians. What made you decide to skip out on the family business, so to speak? In fact, that's the one thing that I always knew I did not want to do. Um. I grew up like in the hospital with my parents, right. I used to go with them when my mom used to go for rounds, and um, I has to hang out with the nurses. The smell of I don't know, the smell of hospital just like really gets me. And I faint this when I saw blood and I took biology in ninth grade and they made mean that we were doing um you know, we were I think we were working on a like a pig or some sort of um what is that call incision? You? Yeah, that's what we were doing. And I sainted in class and I was like, mom, I listen, I love you and everything, but I don't think I have the the guts to be able to be a doctor. It's like, I've seen what you guys do. It's just the second closest thing to being god. I guess you know, it's it's incredible, and I don't think I have the strength to be able to do that. What was their specialty? My father he was a general surgeon. My mother is a gynecologist and the E N T. And did they meet in medical school? No, they didn't. Actually they met at my dad was in the military and he was posted in this one city while my mom was working in a hospital. They met at a party. Oh my goodness. But then they eventually ended up having their own business together and like had their own hospital and it's it's yeah. My my mom still practices right now now. She does cosmetology. So I'm going to get to carpetology because you've become a world expert in the area for a bunch of reasons. But when you when your mom, who probably had some thoughts that maybe her her daughter could become a doctor as your father had so realize you might become an actress or a model, what does she think? Did she ever sit you down and say, honey, are you really sure you want to do that? It was actually the opposite. Um. I was raised in an environment where, yes, I was very academically drawn. I wanted to become an aeronautical engineer. I studied physics and math, and I just when you come from such an academic family, I didn't know that entertainment was an option, even though my father is it was an entertainer as well. They's call him the Singing Surgeon because he used to do all of these shows and he was always singing, and he was he used to compose music right as music, but he did that on an aside because his job was to be a doctor. And when I was raised in a very creative sort of environment, musical my parents loved. My mom loved like the doors and and like the Beatles and Elvis, and my dad would love like let them and listen to like Indian music. So I always knew who was ruling the roost that day depending on the music that I heard coming out of my parents room. We were like super a creative family. So when I was seventeen and I came back from the US, um I went to high school here. UM I was taking some pictures for a scholarship program for university in Australia and the photographer was like, oh, you're really pretty, you know, Can I take some more pictures and my teenage vanity kicked in and I was like, yeah, of course please. My mom came with me because I was seventeen and I thought that those pictures were pretty, and my brother was ten at the time. They both had this idea of sending my photos into Miss India. And I'd never modeled before. I had never I mean, I was a full tomboy. I didn't even I didn't like heals, which is totally the opposite of what I am now. But I went into this pageant and I wanted Then I won Miss World. Then movie offers started coming to me. And I sat down with my dad one day and you know, we had a serious conversation about career, and my father told me that I never want you to have a what if in your life. I never want you to think that if I had tried it, what if I was amazing. He's like, you're eighteen, take a year, a year and a half. If you're awful at acting, you can always go back to school. And he made he just it became the problem became so simple that I just in my entire life, I've had those wings because my parents have always told me, don't be afraid to try new things. That's the only way you'll evolve and grow. And I did my first movie one a bunch of awards, never like look back. I guess it just sort of my destiny provided my vocation. You know, you're you're your humble in the in the process. But I'm quite certain along the way they were challenges and difficulties in I just beg there were times you may have called your parents and said, I am I sure I'm in the right spot. And not so much because you weren't beautiful enough to become Miss India and you know, miss everything, but more because you may be around people you didn't think we're challenging you, or you were exposed to things that you may not have felt were the best for your overall spiritual and mental health growth. That did that happened in a in a fast paced field that's notorious for having some bad influencers. I mean, I think in life, there's no world in which you could live in a perfectly utopian world. Right, There's going to be bad and there's gonna be good. There's gonna be bad experiences and good experiences. But the good thing about the bad ones are that the only place to go is up, and I think that I've always been. Yes, there have been troubling times, and there have been um crazy ups and downs that have happened to me, But I'm a glass half full kind of girl. I always believe in you know, you learn from mistakes, you learn from troubling time, but if you become a victim of it, there'll always be burdens that hold you back. And I choose not to be a victim of any anything bad that's ever happened to me, including like my father's death, including racism, including um sexism, including lack of opportunity, anything, I will not be a victim. I choose to, you know, take my future in my own hands and mobilize myself in a way where I don't have that problem anymore. I'm producing my own movies, um I am um, you know, creating things around me that make me um empowered enough where that never happens to me again, because I don't allow myself to forget the feeling. There's lots more when we come back. Well, let's gets get practical about this. So you're you're the biggest darn Bollywood, which you know, having been to India, and traveled throughout the part of the work at a bit your superstar status, you can't walk through the streets. Then you come to Hollywood, you take a whole It's like going to a different planet. What did you learn about yourself as you made that transition and no longer a home game for you either, You've got to really play and win in a different league. Well, the biggest thing was that, after being an entertainment for about fifteen years, to walk into a different country and have, you know, to start all over again from complete scratch, and to have to remember when Quanticle was coming out, which was my first, um, first acting job in the US, I was petrified the day release because I was the first South Asian female lead ever on network TV and we were in seventeen or sixteen at that time, UM, and I was like, oh, man, if I messed this up, I'm going to mess it up for all my people. And I did the press people at risk one point seven billion people. I I put that responsibility in myself because it's true. And I remember when I went to high school in the U S. I didn't look I didn't see anyone on television that looked like me except Apu from The Simpsons, and I hated him because he didn't sound like me, he didn't think like me, and he was just the stereotype of what all my school friends thought I was. Everyone asked me, why don't you speak like Apha? Don't you speak like this? You know? Which is like there was a bin in my life at that point. So when I came into entertainment and I was moving towards the US, I was very very clear about the fact that this is bigger than who I am, This, what what, what I'm doing, what I'm striving to do. When I'm talking about inclusion and being part of Hollywood in a mainstream way, hopefully with me doing it, it will create the opportunity with people like for people to be able to see that just because I'm a Bollywood actor doesn't mean that's that I can only do a type of thing. Bollywood has become a genre. How is it a genre? I saw a popcorn at Whole Food in Bollywood flavor? How is this? It's like what would be the flavor of Hollywood. It's crazy. So, I mean it's those kind of stereotypes also that I've really taken upon myself to shatter to fight. Hollywood is not a genre. We're one of the biggest movie making industries in the world. Um. We produced about thousands of movies a year in different genres, completely action, drama, musicals, all of it, just like Hollywood is. And I am extremely privileged to be able to now work in both the biggest movie industries in the world. Well, you've been very vocal and you're beautifully articulating it here about the fight for inclusion and diversity and throughout your expensive career, and you've you've termed it unconscious biased. I think as a physician will speak to this. I think it's hard to be aware of things you've ever experienced, so exactly, it's the right way to phrase it. How has this affected you? Have you mentioned skin color? It's an example, but everything, cultural, attitudes, expectations, UM, Which is what big reason why I'm having this conversation is because when we talk about diversity and inclusion, it is not just about um, different looking people on a billboard. That's not diversity. Diversity is changing of mindsets, changing attitudes UM. And inclusion is whether it is gender, whether it is religion, whether it is ethnicity, whether it is race, whether it is choices, opinions. That is the beauty. You're living in a democracy that we have. We can all be totally different. And but what we're doing in society is we're afraid of differences so much. And that's what affected me. Is when you see someone that looks different, that has come from a part of the world that you don't know, or does not maybe understand the humor, speaks differently or whatever it might be, the first thing that most people do is they're afraid to ask the question that I don't know if I'll offend this person, that I don't have enough knowledge. And we've created a sort of environment in the world where in that of embracing differences, are instead of being curious about something that we don't know about, were sort of are wary of it and we step back, you know, and that creates distance. And as a society, I feel like, is that really the world that we want our kids to come in. I'm thinking about a family soon, and I don't want my kids to have to talk about diversity. That should be their normal, inclusions should be their habit. We need to create a safer world where people feel like different people are not scary, like when we pick up the newspapers every day you read about some crazy form of violence that's happening. Because my God is better than your god, your country is better than my country. It's so basic that we've forgotten humanity in all of this. What I love that you've done is you've captivatevated the world with the coolness of There's not been so much diversity, which I always worried about. Its about being different, but variability. So for example, when you when you want off to Mumbai married Nick Nick Jonas, which you know, an incredible event that changes our cultural expectations. Give me in your own mind, what was a memorable moment of that day that you think might influence people at least influences you about how variability plays into this. It's so interesting that you said that, because that that event definitely changed my life, obviously because I got married, But more than that, I think it opened my mind up to the possibilities of the trust pollination of cultures. Like when I saw Nick's family, our friends from America come down into India, experienced the India that I knew, experience the magic of the hospitality and and the ancient culture that we come from, and the history and and the joys of the traditions, and how embracing everyone was to that, including my husband. Um just showed to me that the world just needs to be educated and we just need to become a little bit more tolerant of each other instead of being so And all of it comes from I think, insecurities and being afraid of some thing new. And is that the kind of world that we've created around each other that we are more like, We're not as fearless anymore, Um, and we're so wary that that cultural exchange. With the Internet being what it is, it's so easy for us to understand the world and understand different people. And we need to use the internet for what it is made for, which was actually bringing the world together instead of driving us apart. More questions after the break, Well, I need the world is designed that people like you change it, and you're doing it. I mean so passionate about this whole process. You joined initiative called Skinclusion, and I'd love to understand why this is such a personal project for you. Well, I am a woman. I am about beauty. Beauty to me in self care is something that's very important to me. I'm also an actor, It's part of my job. So I found out a new new statu you might call it, recently that there there's this spectrum called the Fitzpatrick spectrum, which reduces all the world's different skin tones into six. So one to three, five, six, I am a four, and um, most skin care products that are out there in the market only do clinical research and testing on skin skin types one, two, and three maybe four, So most of the time I'm not included, I am not considered. And I love the fact that Obaji has been doing clinical research and all six skin types for about thirty years before the conversation on on diversity was even the check in the box that everyone wants now. So I love conclusion as an idea first of all, as a name that every one skin is important, every consumer matters, and the taking off from the fact that I felt not included as soon as I found out about this, I can imagine like the Obasi is literally calling out the industry and saying, why is someone else's money more important than someone else is based on their skin type? Why will every consumer not get what they're paying for? And I think that's a really, really important thing to do. We need to be audacious, We need to be bold, We need to be demanding about inclusive inclusion. It cannot be something that's going to happen on its own. We have cultural biases for years that and unconscious. So most of them unconscious that have that are that existing society. And the only way to break that is actually speak logic and and with clarity and say that diversity and inclusion is the name of the game. Look around you, there is not one type of people anymore. And if we don't include all kinds of people in our lives, expand our friend's circle, get to know different cultures, than the violence that we're seeing in the world is only going to become bigger because if we're just creating differances. Breaka, thank you very much. I love the way you tied all together. Uh, at least let me just if I can't, I want you to comments some of the things that Prank has mentioned us. Uh. She she jokingly said her father was a singing surgeon. I couldn't help but by comment in the fact that your dad was known as the rock dock ye music and surgery. I don't know what those do have in common. But something something's going on. But shure share with Crack and everybody. That's the story of your dad and how he ended up being deemed rock dock by Rolling Stone magazine. This is back around nineteen seventy. Yeah, it was. It was probably exactly when he was playing rock music in the hour um just to keep I guess, keep things moving along. And uh, it hadn't been done a lot back then, no one had done it. And I'll tell you in surgery nowadays, we all play music and we change a kind of music depending on what's going on in the case. Right, if you're got gotta get going, you can play a bit more hip hop. Patient hates kind of music you're playing. I'm just wondering, well, it was that fear that actually prompted me to the first time to play audio tapes in the operating room for the patients. That we put headsets on them and very being there, you know the old remember the old Sony Walkman. We put them in their ear so the patient would hear their own music, stuff that they liked. Maybe they might might Vivaldi and we've got you know, too many jay z playing in the in the ore. And but then even within the ore we have different kinds of music. But in the dawn of surgery when where this was first being experimented with, uh, it was your dad who would play rock music because he thought they kept the team coalesced. They were doing heart surgery, which is really tough back then, a lot of people not doing well, very long operations, and and it kept the energy of the room positive. So someone noticed that he was doing this and they was getting great results. They've done the first heart transplant in the country in Houston at the time, and um, and he was practicing up in Philadelphia, which has got a lot of great music traditions. So people sort of into it, and Rolling Sto a magazine found out In fact, I was playing my father in law, Lisa's dad in in Trivial Pursuits. You remember this game, so that they quit. The question was who who was called rock Dock by Rolling Show magazine. When I who it was, he was the answer. How many people out there then have played true in pursuit with a person whose name was the answer to the question that they were competing on. It wasn't fair. I thought the fix was on anyway, the other thing that the other plant could bring it up. Was this whole what if moment? Because I remember with my father trying to figure out as I was going to medical school because a lot of doctors are attempted um to push their kids in the medicine uh. And for me, I was fed a complete I was assumed I would go into medicine. But when Paraka's dad said, hey, listen, this is a what if moment. I don't want you for the rest of your life regretting that you didn't go on and pursue a potential career in modeling or acting, because you can do that for a year or two and try it out. If you don't like it, you can always go into medicine. I mean that that's not dissimilar for some of the advice we've been our kids. Yeah, I don't so far. I don't think any of them have really been called to medicine. That's medicine. As to what if moment, part of it is take chances, right, Yeah, I mean, if you're gonna do something that's not I really high, high opportunity for a long term career, do it now when you're eighteen years old and eighteen years old, take a chance, make a big mistakes when you have taken the risk and failed then to wish that you had thirty years down the road. And I think that those are the ways that you cope with the challenges in life, realize that these are transient. And I was touched by you know, it was hard for her when her father passed, and I think those kinds of memories reinforced in her mind that he was always there for her, that he wanted her to do. But even though it made have made him prouder at the time for her to be a doctor if she needed the model first and turned out probably worked out well for for the whole family there as well. But of all the things that really caught my attention was this whole issue of the victim mentality, which there are many people who have been victimize who have been hurt, have been biased against skin color, sexual preference, many made gender, but not allowing yourself to be defined as a victim is an important part of Pancha's story which I think, um all of us should take note of. Yeah, she's she's really resilient, strong, active woman and she's not gonna let anything get in her way, and that that way you control your your agenda, you control your life story. Otherwise, you spend most times defending why things didn't work out because you were a victim, as opposed to saying, yeah, maybe I won't succeed, maybe my odds of successful lower because I was victimized. But but I'm not gonna let anybody take away my chance to compete, my opportunity, whatever it might be, to get into the ring. You know, when you're victimized, it's it isn't it's a moment in time. If you carry that attitude of victimization through for throughout your life, you're continuing, continuing to be you know, bullied by that. Those people, you're giving them more power in your life than they deserve exactly. I think that's one of the reasons why her approach to diversity is so powerful. It's really a diversity. It's variety, and when you speak about what what what that really requires is not just different billboards on sides of roads. It's actually a whole mindset difference, which is hard for most of us to get our heads around. I've struggled with it a lot because if I didn't grow up the way you grew up, how can I possibly know what it was like to grow up the way you grew up. It's impossible to to pretend that that's true. But I what I could do is begin to change my mindset about the fact that there's going to always be inherent bias and just be thoughtful about it. Recognizes they're trying not to magnify it if it's it's possible, and be respectful about that at least energetically bring that to the equation. Yeah, I was with some guys the other day, actually two days ago, and you're talking about you and my dad ironically, and they're saying, it would have to be impossible for a surgeon to be racist or have prejudice against people for differences, because as soon as you cut open the skin were exactly the same. Yep, it's one of those littell moments because there was no difference on the inside, although people for many years thought there was a difference. But again, it's not even the conscious bias, as ran Cold pointed out, it's this, it's the unconscious bias, the the the the differences that you that we have that you're not aware we have, that leads you to believe certain things, which is again it's not a bad thing. It's a good thing that those biases exist, because that's why the species we survive. We're not all identical, we don't make the same mistakes, but respect the fact that there's another approach to it that you don't necessarily have to been oputing good judgment on anyway. I enjoyed having around the program. Uh I hope, I guess did as well. See you next time.