Priyanka Chopra has spoken candidly about meeting her now-husband, Nick Jonas, and why she was hesitant at first to pursue a relationship with him.
The 40-year-old actor reflected on how she first connected with Jonas in 2016, two years before they got married, on Monday’s episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. She noted that, when he first “slid in [her] DMs”, they were both in separate and “complicated” relationships, so they didn’t meet in person.
According to Chopra, while she and Jonas, now 30, “still continued chatting,” she had reservations about dating him, for reasons such as their 10-year age gap.
“I was at the end of my last long relationship before Nick, so I didn’t want to engage as much at that time,” she said. “I was also 35, Nick was 25. I really put a stop on it in a way because I judged a book by its cover. I was like: ‘I want to settle down. I’ve done the fun dating thing.’”
After pointing out that she’d already had flings here and there, the Love Again star added: “I was ready to get serious, and not realising that my husband is a 70-year-old man stuck in a 30-year-old’s body.”
Chopra recalled that she and Jonas spoke from 2016 to 2017 and went to the Met Gala together in 2017, since they were both single. Although she said that she reminded herself of Jonas’ age at the time, she recalled there was one moment with him during the event that changed her perspective.
“I just remember this moment felt like it stretched for 10 minutes, but probably was two minutes, and I was just standing and staring for a second,” she said about walking into the gala. “And Nick came back to my view, and my eyes focused on him. And he gave me his hand and said: ‘Shall we?’ And didn’t leave my side that whole night.”
She also revealed that she and Jonas had gone out to dinner together one day before the Met Gala, and that the singer had opted not to kiss her. Although she said she was “offended” at the time, she said she later realised that he was playing the “long game”. However, she said they didn’t really go on their first date until May 2018, after Jonas “asked [her] out a few times”.
The Matrix Resurrections star then recalled how she felt for Jonas after their first date, when she and a friend visited him in the studio.
“I think I fell in love with him the first time I saw him in a studio,” she said. “Nick has the most incredible sound, amazing tone, and control and his falsetto. He’s very jazzy and R&B, the way he sings. My knees buckled.”
Chopra and Jonas officially tied the knot months later, with two separate wedding ceremonies in December 2018. In January 2022, they announced the birth of their daughter, Malti Marie, who they welcomed via surrogate.
Elsewhere in the podcast episode, Chopra shared her candid thoughts about motherhood and how she always knew that she wanted to be a parent, even before she met the Jonas Brothers singer.
“It was one of the big reasons I didn’t want to date Nick at that time because I was like: ‘I don’t know if he wants kids at 25,’” she explained. “But I’ve always wanted kids. I love kids.”
She revealed that, before she got married and became a mother, she decided to freeze her eggs, which ultimately shaped her personal and professional life for the better.
“I felt such a freedom. I did it in my early thirties,” Chopra explained. “I could continue on an ambitious warpath that I wanted to achieve. I wanted to get to a certain place in my career.”
“I also hadn’t met the person I wanted to have children with or I didn’t see that,” she added. “That’s anxiety-inducing. [I was] 35, and my mom’s an OB-GYN who’s like: ‘36, just do it.’”
