Priyanka Chopra has found herself under the scanner, thanks to rumours about her alleged relationship with Nick Jonas. The actress also faced flak for appearing in a controversial anti-India episode in the American series Quantico. But, the former Miss World can breathe a sigh of relief, as far as her Hollywood career is concerned. Her second Hollywood outing A Kid Like Jake is a sensitive film about a little child grappling with gender issues and how his parents come to terms with their son’s feminine personality. The movie will feature Priyanka in a respectable though brief role that insults neither intelligence nor any culture. The role will be a far cry from the one she played in her Hollywood debut film, Baywatch, which reduced her to a caricature of a vamp. In A Kid Like Jake, Priyanka is cast as Amal, a mother of a young son whose husband (played by Asif Mandvi) is an obnoxious, insensitive, self-obsessed, money-making man.
Priyanka has just three sequences with Claire Danes, who enjoys the lead role as the perplexed mother. In all three sequences, Priyanka leaves a lasting impression, especially in the scene where her husband embarrasses her in a restaurant, in full view of the other diners.
In terms of footage, the role doesn’t offer Priyanka much screen time. And if offered a similar heroine ki saheli part in Bollywood (the kind Aruna Irani played in the 1970s) Priyanka would have rejected it outright. But here, in a prestigious American film, she seems content doing a secondary, albeit a well-etched role.
