Shilpi Sampad (MID-DAY; August 17, 2016)

"My number one rule of doing something is that no else should have done it before," Priyanka Chopra tells hitlist. The actress-producer, who commands a 14.7 million-strong following on Twitter, engaged with fans on August 15 (August 16 in India) via live periscope at the microblogging site’s headquarters in New York. “I started a Twitter account because no one else had,” she chuckled as she went live. Priyanka chatted with Rishi Jaitly, vice president, Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, Twitter, which was broadcast live.

What makes her visit remarkable is not just that she is the first Indian to visit the NY headquarters but also the fact that the last public figure to be invited was US Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. In 2010, Priyanka had been invited by Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, to visit their headquarters in San Francisco. At that time, she had the highest number of followers on the social networking site among Bollywood celebrities. Now, it’s Amitabh Bachchan.

Pratiksha Rao, head of media partnerships, Twitter South-East Asia, says Twitter had long planned to invite Priyanka to visit the headquarters given her rising popularity in the US. “We planned it around Independence Day since Priyanka, as an Indian, is doing a lot of good work here in America. She discussed the future of entertainment in India as well as globally. She is not just a Bollywood celeb, but a global icon. Fans from various parts of the world tuned in to the live periscope and asked her questions. Some of her fans in New York were also part of the open interaction. She used the Twitter QnA app for the first time too,” adds Pratiksha over phone from New York.


PC on periscope

>> My first tweet was 1,2,3, testing.
>> When I was young, I’d paint my nails saffron, white and green. I did that in Mary Kom as well because Mary did that for one of her final matches.
>> Whoever I follow on Twitter are people I want to know about as soon as I wake up.
>> Quantico has now moved to New York, so it is really fun. Plus, it is a direct flight back to Mumbai from here, so I can go home, but it’s not something I get to do much.
>> New York and Mumbai has three things in common - noise, spirit and smell.
>> I am a storyteller. I am making regional movies and I also want to make movies here.
>> I was a big buffy fan. I was a ’90s kid.
>> I was a big fan of Baywatch. It was a show much more popular all over the world than just America. Just looking at Dwayne (Johnson) and Zac (Efron) together is funny int itself; now imagine that in slow motion.
>> I play the bitchiest, badass bombshell of a villain in Baywatch.