Priyanka Chopra Opens up About Her "Tumultuous Relationship" Before Nick Jonas
Priyanka Chopra got real about her dating history on the latest episode of the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard. When her now-husband Nick Jonas made the first move and slid into her Twitter DMs, she was nearing the end of a rocky relationship with an unnamed ex. She recalled how they met in 2016, a year after the singer’s breakup with model Olivia Culpo.
"I was in a tumultuous relationship at that time," Chopra told Shepard. "This is '16. And we had common friends who didn't want me to be in my relationship and were like, 'Oh, [Nick is] single too. He's really not with that girl, but he is.' It was complicated on both our ends."
Reflecting on her love life before Jonas, Chopra deemed some of her exes "a little bit narcissistic." She admitted, "I kept making the same mistakes. A lot of the pattern in my relationships was me feeling gaslit because I gave that kind of power to the people that I was with, where I was like, 'You come first.'”
Chopra took some time for herself before she and Jonas made their relationship official in 2018 and married the same year. "The last [relationship]—and the year and a half that I took before I met my husband—officially gave me so much clarity on what I needed," she explained. "Not what I wanted."
Detailing the period between the pair’s initial interactions and their wedding in India, the mum-of-one explained: "When Nick texted me in like [2016] and slid into my DMs and we started chatting, I was at the end of my last long relationship before Nick. So, I didn't want to engage as much at that time." Priyanka also spoke about why she felt apprehensive before dating Nick. "I was also like 35. Nick was 25. I really put a stop on it in a way because I judged the book by the cover. I was like, 'I wanna settle down. I've been there. I've done the fun dating thing.' I was like ready to get serious."
"We kept in touch for those two years; like, random texts here and there," Chopra says. "We went to the Met Gala together in [2017], because we were both single-ish, and we were both going with Ralph Lauren and they said, 'You know, we have sort of couples. Would you like to just go together?' Both of us said yes." She fondly recalls Jonas behaving like "a gentleman" toward her at the ceremony, with the singer not leaving her side for the entire night during the post-carpet party.
Looking back on her initial hesitation, Priyanka made it clear that her fears about him being younger were unfounded since her husband is "actually a 70-year-old man stuck in a 30-year-old's body."
Chopra and Jonas officially married in a multiday ceremony in December 2018. And four years later, in January 2022, they welcomed their first child, a baby girl named Malti Marie.
