Priyanka Chopra covers the latest issue of Paper Magazine and the entire shoot is like this: terrible. Priyanka is a gorgeous woman and you really have to TRY to make her look this bad. Anyway, Priyanka is promoting various things, like her TV show, so of course she’ll continue to give endless interviews. All of her magazine interviews go with the same backstory, and she says similar sh-t every time. But there were some new thoughts in this interview. Some highlights:

Her life was destined to be like this: “I feel like it was destiny. I’m a big believer in destiny. I really feel like there has to be a bigger picture planned for each one of us, because there are sometimes things that happen which you don’t expect at all, and it works out for your best interest. You get in life what you need, not what you want. If you have the ability to recognize those opportunities, life can be pretty all right.”

She’s ambitious: “I’m extremely ambitious and I think it’s a really great quality for girls to have. Somehow, ambition and feminism have turned into bad words, and they’re not.” Chopra defines ambition as “wanting to be the best version of yourself,” and says she’s “learned that over time. [But] of course there are dark moments when you’re just like, ‘I can’t do this,’ and you feel scared. I never say ‘no’ to anything because you never know the new experience that will come your way. Yes, it’s really hard sometimes. As a girl, as someone who didn’t know anyone in the business or the entertainment industry, it was very solitary, my journey. It’s been very long, and that’s been the hard part. It makes you vulnerable.”

Asian diversity in the industry: “It’s still not enough. Aziz Ansari and I were at the Boom Boom Room after the Met Gala [this year]. We were hanging out and looking at everyone, and he said to me, ‘You know Priyanka, I’ve been here so many times. Seven years ago there were only two South Asians, and today, there are seven.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s a lot, Aziz, that we’ve gone from two to seven in a room of 500.’ I’m laughing about it, but representation needs to be brought up in a big way.”

Americans need to understand India: “One, Bollywood is not a city. I feel like the word ‘Bollywood’ has been reduced to a Zumba class. Two, there’s so much beauty in India’s chaos. It’s not one thing. It’s not even ten things. It’s just a metamorphosis of contradictions, and there’s music to it. When you see the country, your every sense will be assaulted with how much there is in terms of culture and music and people and the contradictions that live within society. We don’t all have arranged marriages, and there’s a lot more food outside of chicken tikka masala. I can go on.”

How she once promoting a skin-whitening cream but never will again: “I was made to feel very self-conscious when I was younger because I’m darker-toned, and that was a huge part of my self-esteem issue when I was growing up. So I did this cream commercial and when I saw it, it made me feel like crap. It reminded me of what I felt like when I was a little girl. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is what I felt like. Like what I have is not good enough.’ I got out of the contract and never did it again. It took me seeing myself advocating the thing that made my teenage years miserable, because it was normal and everyone did it. It was sold in stores right next to toothpaste. You don’t understand the psychology of what it does to society. When I did it is when I understood it. Creams for glowing skin is different, but as soon as it says ‘whitening,’ it’s like, what?”

[From Paper]

“One, Bollywood is not a city. I feel like the word ‘Bollywood’ has been reduced to a Zumba class.” I love this. It’s not just with India though, let’s be real: Americans tend to view entire countries or regions as monoliths, as homogenized cultures that can be generalized. We do that with “Europe” and “Asia” and “China” and everything else. In the particular case of American understanding of Indian cultures, religions, music and films… yeah, very few people “get” it.

Here are some photos of Priyanka at the TIFF premiere of Pahuna: The Little Visitors. That suit is HORRID.

Photos courtesy of WENN, cover courtesy of Paper Magazine.