On Purpose with Jay Shetty

PRIYANKA CHOPRA JONAS: Fame, Motherhood, Love and the Moment That Changed Everything

February 25, 2026

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  • Priyanka Chopra Jonas has consciously shifted her life's priority from relentless ambition and control to finding a sense of peace and prioritizing time with family, a change influenced by marriage and motherhood. 
  • The ability to be open and sincere in the public eye, which Priyanka found difficult due to her pageant background and media training, is becoming easier as she gets more in touch with her own feelings. 
  • Priyanka's transition to Hollywood involved a difficult, emotionally traumatic period of starting over, feeling cornered in Bollywood, and consciously choosing to focus purely on her craft to navigate the new industry. 
  • Priyanka Chopra Jonas navigated the emotionally traumatic transition from Bollywood to Hollywood by focusing intensely on the work and relying on a dedicated team for support during a lonely period. 
  • The profound experience of welcoming her premature daughter, Malti Marie, shifted Priyanka's understanding of strength from control to fierce devotion and protection of her family. 
  • Priyanka and Nick Jonas actively practice expressing appreciation and love to each other and others while they are alive, a habit inspired by the loss of her father and the desire to avoid post-mortem praise. 

Segments

Current Life Joy and Peace
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(00:05:46)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka Chopra Jonas finds the most surprising joy in her daughter and a newfound sense of peace after decades of relentless ambition.
  • Summary: Priyanka prioritizes time with family and nesting activities like unpacking, which she previously would have felt guilty about taking time for. She notes that this shift to prioritizing time over achievement is a recent development, unlike her previous career pivots which felt externally driven. This current phase allows her the agency to slow down and enjoy moments without feeling the need to constantly push for the next thing.
Priyanka and Nick’s Partnership
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(00:12:47)
  • Key Takeaway: Nick Jonas’s sincerity and ability to articulate feelings provided a model that helped Priyanka become more in touch with and articulate her own emotions.
  • Summary: Priyanka found Nick’s sincerity during his interview disarming, contrasting with her own media training that made deep sharing difficult. Nick taught her the importance of discussing feelings before jumping to solutions during arguments, a profound learning early in their marriage. His quiet confidence and natural leadership, which she found attractive, helped her trust him to guide conversations.
Parenting Styles and Communication
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(00:15:13)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka and Nick maintain a unified front in parenting, with Priyanka typically setting the rules and schedule.
  • Summary: Priyanka and Nick ensure they are always on the same page regarding decisions for their daughter, avoiding conflicting messages. Priyanka often takes the role of setting down rules regarding schedules and eating habits, accepting the responsibility of being the one to ’take the hit.’ They view having a child as the biggest personal growth experience that forces personality metamorphosis.
Self-Criticism and Constructive Thought
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(00:17:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka is actively working on being less hard on herself by questioning if her thoughts are constructive and separating thoughts from facts.
  • Summary: Priyanka acknowledges her therapist’s observation that she is very hard on herself, a trait linked to her past ambition and need for control. She now uses two tools to manage negative spirals: asking if a thought is constructive and recognizing that thoughts are not facts. This shift allows her to forgive her past self and focus on the present and future, accepting that past ambition was necessary for survival.
Navigating Public Scrutiny
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(00:43:28)
  • Key Takeaway: The key to handling public scrutiny is recognizing that people always talk, regardless of the era, and protecting one’s sanity by choosing not to react to non-constructive opinions.
  • Summary: Priyanka admits that mean comments still occasionally affect her, but she generally focuses on the good in her life after coming out of a ‘storm.’ She notes that public gossip is not new; it simply used to happen outside of social media where it wasn’t absorbed. Protecting sanity involves recognizing that opinions come with the territory of being public and choosing not to waste time reacting to things that are not one’s business.
Bollywood Exit and Hollywood Pivot
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(00:50:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka felt ‘cornered’ in Bollywood, leading her to move continents to find longevity, which required erasing past accomplishments to start anew in Hollywood.
  • Summary: Priyanka felt limited in her Bollywood work and needed movement to survive emotionally, leading to her cross-continental move. Her entry into music was a timely ‘olive branch’ that provided a creative breath of fresh air during a tough period where she also lost her father. Transitioning to acting in Hollywood meant starting at the bottom, facing rejection, and retraining her brain to deliver dialogues in English, focusing solely on her craft as her edge.
Pivoting Career and Hard Work
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(01:01:59)
  • Key Takeaway: Pivoting to a new industry required Priyanka Chopra Jonas to retrain her brain from improvising in Hindi to delivering lines in English, involving years of coaching.
  • Summary: The transition to Hollywood involved years of dedicated work, including acting coaching to adapt dialogue delivery from Hindi to English. This process was emotionally traumatic but ultimately led to her current role as a producer. She focused on the work, accepting smaller parts until her career gained momentum.
Acknowledging Past Struggles and Support
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(01:03:37)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka Chopra Jonas acknowledges that the loneliness and darkness she felt during her career transition were real to her, despite the support of her dedicated team.
  • Summary: The period of transitioning industries felt very dark and lonely, but her team held her together when friends and family were not around. She now acknowledges these past feelings, recognizing that her perception of the gravity of the situation was her reality at the time. This period occurred roughly 15-16 years prior to the recording.
The Practice of Expressing Gratitude
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(01:05:11)
  • Key Takeaway: Inspired by the posthumous praise for her father, Priyanka Chopra Jonas now makes a practice of sending unsolicited texts to people she appreciates while they are still alive.
  • Summary: Society often fails to celebrate people while they are alive, leading to an eruption of love only after they pass away. Priyanka now texts people she thinks of to express appreciation, finding that this gesture often heals the recipient. This practice is about sharing gratitude privately, not for public recognition.
Self-Protection vs. Appreciation
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(01:08:09)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka Chopra Jonas initially built a wall against expecting appreciation as a self-protective measure during her early career struggles in a new industry.
  • Summary: In her 20s, Priyanka adopted the attitude that everyone was just doing their job and she should not expect appreciation, which was a way to protect herself from potential letdowns. This attitude stemmed from not receiving appreciation while navigating the tough industry pivot. She realized everyone, including herself, needs to feel useful and appreciated.
Trauma of Daughter’s Birth
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(01:14:58)
  • Key Takeaway: The birth of her daughter, Malti Marie, involved a traumatic premature delivery at 27 weeks, requiring nearly 110 days in the NICU under intense duress.
  • Summary: The journey to motherhood was difficult, culminating in the baby being born purple and requiring immediate, intense medical intervention, including intubation. During the NICU stay, Priyanka and Nick worked shifts, singing and playing mantras to the baby, who received multiple blood transfusions. They were forced to announce the birth early due to external pressure, despite not knowing the outcome.
Shifting Priorities After Motherhood
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(01:20:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Holding her vulnerable, premature daughter for the first time immediately shifted Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s focus from her own fear to becoming a ’tigress’ dedicated to protecting her child.
  • Summary: Upon holding her daughter, who weighed only one pound, 11 ounces, Priyanka felt an unprecedented need to protect her, realizing she could not afford the privilege of being afraid. Her focus immediately turned to ensuring the baby’s health, nutrition, and survival, making everything else take a backseat. This experience solidified her partnership with Nick, where they operated as a seamless team.
Forgiving the Journey’s Timing
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(01:24:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka Chopra Jonas made peace with having children later in life, accepting that the difficult journey was meant to be with Nick Jonas and their specific child.
  • Summary: She reflected that choosing to have children later may have contributed to the difficulty of the journey, but questioning that choice is futile as it would have resulted in a different soul. She views living this life with the right partner for this specific baby as her greatest blessing. The mind often plays games of ‘shoulda, coulda, woulda’ regarding past decisions.
Faith as a Stronghold
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(01:26:33)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s strong, multicultural faith, particularly devotion to Lord Shiva, serves as a central pillar providing a sense of safety and guidance through scary times.
  • Summary: Growing up in India ingrained faith as a major part of her life, influenced by Catholicism, Islam, and Hinduism. She defines faith as a relationship with something larger than oneself, where religion is the unique path to that connection. When facing difficulty, she retreats into prayer, feeling held and safe until she comes through the challenge.
Nick Jonas’s Affirmation of Love
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(01:29:43)
  • Key Takeaway: Nick Jonas wrote Priyanka a letter affirming his awe of her character, her non-judgmental nature, and his commitment to prioritizing her happiness and telling her she is loved.
  • Summary: Nick praised Priyanka’s quiet strength, her ability to make people feel safe, and her rare quality of always finding the good in people without judgment. He expressed pride in how she navigated massive life changes, like moving countries, while staying true to her roots. He reaffirmed his promise to her mother to always ensure her happiness and express her value.
The Need for Usefulness and Validation
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(01:36:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Deep down, humans desire usefulness and validation, fighting the urge to deny this need, which is often rooted in self-protection from potential disappointment.
  • Summary: People often fight the feeling of wanting validation because they do not want to appear needy, leading to a cycle where they deny that need in others as well. The core human desire is to feel useful; feeling valueless arises when one does not feel useful to someone else. Rewarding effort and good work inspires people to repeat those actions.
Humbling Moments in Motherhood
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(01:43:49)
  • Key Takeaway: Priyanka Chopra Jonas experienced a deeply humbling moment when her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Malti Marie, jokingly implied she was a bad mother for leaving to work.
  • Summary: While preparing to leave for a film shoot, Malti Marie, who talks to her dolls about her feelings, looked at her baby doll and said, ‘I’m such a good mama. I don’t leave you and go to work.’ This comment struck Priyanka deeply during her flight, illustrating how children can instantly humble parents. Malti Marie is noted to be very sensitive to her parents’ emotional states.
Returning to Indian Cinema
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(01:47:57)
  • Key Takeaway: Returning to Indian cinema to work with director S.S. Rajamouli on the film Varanasi is the perfect way for Priyanka Chopra Jonas to re-engage with the industry she missed.
  • Summary: Priyanka missed the dancing, chaos, and creativity of Indian film sets, making this project the ideal re-entry point. Working with Rajamouli is exciting because his vision is beyond limited imagination, offering her a role with a beautiful arc of ups and downs. The long production time has been gratifying, and she even brought Malti Marie to visit the farm associated with the production.
Entrepreneurship and Pivoting Careers
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(01:53:39)
  • Key Takeaway: In the current era of rapid change, individuals should be enterprising and act as entrepreneurs for themselves, refusing to stay confined to a single ’lane’ or medium.
  • Summary: Priyanka applauds Jay Shetty’s ability to pivot and win, noting that people around you often advise against leaving your lane, which is poor advice in a dynamic world. Creativity is not limited to one medium; skills like writing or problem-solving can be leveraged into producing or directing. Being enterprising and understanding one’s strengths is crucial for navigating modern business.