Priyanka Chopra on coping with her father’s death: ‘That pain would never go away, it has become a companion’

“After my dad passed away, I came to a slow but steady conclusion that that kind of pain would never go away. It’s your companion. So, if you are thinking of or waiting for the day when it starts hurting less, when it doesn’t affect you anymore or when you get over it… You are never getting over it; it becomes a companion. There will be days when it comes out in a biggish way and wants to stay over for dinner or maybe a week, and there will be days when you don’t even remember about it until you see a photo and you’re like (sigh),” she said while appearing on the recent episode of Read the Room podcast. “Any form of grief will have a duration in which it will become your companion and you have to let it,” she added.

Ashok Chopra’s battle with cancer ended in 2013, leaving a profound impact on Priyanka, who also bears a tattoo on her right hand with the inscription “Daddy’s lil girl” in his handwriting.

In 2021, during a chat with Oprah Winfrey on the latter’s show Super Soul, she said that her father’s death changed her ‘relationship with God’. “I think around the death of my dad. I was very angry. I was very angry. My relationship with God changed a little bit. But then at the same time, I feel like God helped me find salvation and come out of it too. But at that time, it was tested.”

“Oh man, I went to every temple there was to go to. I did every prayer there was to do. I met every godman or godwoman I needed to meet, every doctor I needed to go to. I flew my dad to Singapore, New York, Europe, India, everywhere, just to do whatever I could to prolong his life. It’s such a helpless feeling.”

Priyanka Chopra was last seen in the American romantic comedy-drama Love Again (2023), wherein she starred alongside Sam Heughan. Her husband Nick Jonas also made a cameo appearance in the movie.