Priyanka Chopra has revealed that her husband Nick Jonas’ embrace of her Indian culture is the cornerstone of their eight-year marriage.
The “Citadel” actress, 44, made the disclosure to E! News at the New York City premiere of “The Cycle of Love” on Thursday. She tied the knot with the Jonas Brothers singer, 33, in December 2018 after a whirlwind six-month courtship that began with him sliding into her Twitter DMs in September 2016.
“I don’t know if I’d love him if he didn’t,” Chopra said of Jonas’s cultural openness. “That is a big part of any story or any relationship that is multicultural. I think it’s really important to have a sense of respect for your partner’s roots.”
Chopra added that “being kind to your partner” is “something that’s really important” in sustaining their bond. The couple has faced persistent public scrutiny since their union, with Chopra acknowledging in a February Variety cover story that the intercultural nature of their relationship—different countries, different religions, and their age gap—”rubbed people the wrong way.”
“I don’t know what was it about us that rubbed people the wrong way,” she said in the interview published Feb. 11. “I think there was the intercultural nature of it—different countries, different religions, age gap. It was very hurtful.”
Through the negativity, the couple turned inward rather than outward. “And we both, instead of looking out, just sort of looked at each other, and we were like, ‘It doesn’t matter,'” she shared. “So it’s like water off a duck’s back now.”
“We’re eight years in,” Chopra emphasized to Variety. “If people want to keep waiting for it to implode, that’s their choice. I stopped thinking about it.”
The actress has also credited Jonas’s sincerity as a defining force in their marriage. “Nick has this absolute sincerity,” she said. “It inspires me every day in a profession which requires you to pivot and become whatever you need to put on. He’s constantly sincere.”
She continued, tracing the quality to his upbringing: “His parents are the most wonderful, levelheaded, absolute saints, so I can see where it comes from. But it’s such a disarming quality about him.”
Chopra explained that Jonas’s comfort in his own sincerity has helped her grow personally. “I really learned how to be a lot more comfortable in my awkwardness and my insecurities since I got married to him,” she said. “It really continues to be inspiring to me, this sincerity. We don’t see it often enough anymore, that deep truth when you just start talking to someone. You’re like, ‘Oh, this person is completely transparent.'”
In the viral moment that launched their public romance, Jonas made the first move via social media in September 2016, messaging Chopra on Twitter that mutual friends suggested they meet. She fired back, “My team can read this. Why don’t you just text me?” They attended the 2017 Met Gala together as friends before their romantic relationship began in mid-2018. Jonas proposed within two months of going public, and they married in a lavish multi-day ceremony in Jodhpur, India that December, blending Hindu and Christian traditions. They welcomed daughter Malti Marie via surrogate in January 2022.
Jonas, for his part, recognized Chopra as his lifelong partner almost immediately. “It was kind of an instant thing,” he told Entertainment Tonight in 2019. “I knew once we locked in together that I had a partner for life and a teammate, someone I could walk through the good times and the bad times with, and that was the key.”
The couple continues to honor Chopra’s heritage through Hindu traditions and holidays, sharing photos from a family trip to India with Malti in 2023. They also maintain matching tattoos commemorating Jonas’s proposal—checks and boxes behind her ears and on his arms—symbolizing how she “checked all his boxes.”
Chopra currently stars in the action film “The Bluff,” while Jonas released his album “Sunday Best” in 2025.