'Citadel' 's Priyanka Chopra Jonas on Receiving Equal Pay for 'First Time' After Fighting Her Whole Career

"When I did Citadel, it was the first time in my career that I had pay parity with my male costar — the first time in 22 years," Priyanka Chopra Jonas said

Photo: Renee Dominguez/Getty

Priyanka Chopra Jonas is getting candid about receiving equal pay on the job and how she earned it for the very first time.

During a conversation with Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke at South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival on Friday, the 40-year-old actress revealed that she received pay parity for the first time while working on new series Citadel.

"I've been working in the entertainment industry for now 22 years, and I have done about almost 70-plus features and two TV shows," she shared. "When I did Citadel, it was the first time in my career that I had pay parity with my male costar — the first time in 22 years."

"And I wonder: Did that happen because there are very few female decision-makers in Hollywood?" she told Salke. "I wonder if it would have been a different conversation if a woman didn't helm that decision."

In the action-spy thriller Citadel, Chopra stars opposite Richard Madden as two former agent whose whose memories have been wiped after the downfall of their agency, Citadel. Now, the two are being pulled out of the fray to prevent a new world order.

While on stage at SXSW, Chopra Jonas and Salke debuted a new clip for the series, showing her and Madden having a tense conversation in a kitchen where he attempts to inform her about their wiped memories and respective identities.

This isn't the first time that Chopra Jonas has opened up about pay parity. In December 2022, she spoke about the issue in Bollywood while speaking to BBC 100 Women.

"I've never had pay parity in Bollywood," she explained. "I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor."

"It [the pay gap] is large, substantially large," she added. "And so many women still deal with that. I'm sure I will too if I worked with a male co-actor now in Bollywood."

"My generation of female actors have definitely asked [for equal pay]. We've asked, but we've not got it."

Renee Dominguez/Getty

During her appearance at SXSW, Chopra Jonas also discussed the criticism she faces as a public figure.

"I've been told many things that are difficult to hear. In my job, the pressure is so intense you can't really show the chinks in your armor," she shared. "Someone told me yesterday that I wasn't sample-sized… I was hurt and I discussed it with my family and I cried to my husband [Nick Jonas], and my team, and I felt really bad about the fact that I'm not sample size, and that's a problem, apparently, and most of us are not and sample size is size 2."

"I have had times when I may have said something, and it's been misconstrued, and you see people saying the meanest and nastiest things not just about me, about my child, about my family members, and I think sometimes people forget you are even human," she continued. "And those pressures - it's inexplicable. I can't explain how it feels when you are sitting down on your couch and you just feel the world coming at you because people have forgotten that you are human."

"I think what you have to do is surround yourself with people who love you and surround yourself with people who care about you, and not about what you can bring to the table and not about what you can do for me. People who want to see you smile and be enriched," she added. "It doesn't have to be a room full of people - I can count them on my hands."

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The first two episodes of Citadel premiere on Prime Video on April 28, with new episodes dropping weekly through May 26.