INTERVIEW: Priyanka Chopra Jonas Loves Being an Action-Hero in Heels in ‘Citadel’

Often with the action genre, female characters are one of two things: You’re either a damsel or you’re such a strong female character that most of the feminine qualities are therefore erased. Those characters sometimes just feel like a female insert character that used to be a man. There’s nothing wrong with them, it’s just a lot of what happens in movies and television shows. But what I really loved about Citadel is that Nadia (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) isn’t afraid of kicking ass and doing it in heels.

In preparation for the show’s release, I was lucky enough to talk with Chopra Jonas about the role and what was appealing to the character. Nadia is a woman who doesn’t let her guard down around most people but Mason (Richard Madden) has mastered the art of getting her to open up and their scenes are by far the most fascinating thus far in the show and Chopra Jonas talked about how she found the balance between Nadia’s tougher side and when she does inevitably open up.

“That was a lot of fun to do because I’m a very emotional person in general in real life,” she said. “Like, if I’m feeling something, you will see it. If you see what I’m feeling on my face, I don’t have any problems communicating it. But Nadia’s not like that. She’s very closeted with her feelings, you know? She doesn’t, she thinks vulnerability is a weakness. And she’s learned to kind of depend only and solely on herself. But Mason’s the only one that kind of gets under her skin. And that’s what we wanted to really establish in the first one was the reason why they’re so drawn to each other, no matter what happens in their lives is they can’t trust anybody, but they trust each other. They know if I’m going, if I’m dying, he’ll be behind me or he’ll protect me in the same way if something’s happening to him, I know I will go and get him. So there’s that star crossed almost, you know, they’re magnetism between the two of them, which was so fun to create because Nadia just sometimes in a flash lets her guard down. She doesn’t ever let her guard down and it’s usually with Mason. So you kind of look forward to their scenes together where you’re like ‘oh, we’re gonna see off duty Nadia,’ because the only time she’s kind of off duty is with him.”

You can see our full chat here:

Citadel is streaming on Prime Video.

(Featured image: Prime Video)