"She held driver's throat": Priyanka Chopra recalls mom's reaction after Delhi cabbie took wrong late night turn
Feb 19, 2026
By Simran Sethi
Los Angeles [US], February 19 : Parents can go to any extent to protect their children, and Priyanka Chopra's character of Bloody Mary in her upcoming film 'The Bluff' embodies this perfectly, showing she will fight against all odds for her son and family.
Priyanka relates to the role on a personal level. Being a daughter and mother herself, she very well understands the bond between a parent and child.
In a latest interview with ANI, while speaking about the unique courage mothers have for their children, she recalled a childhood memory when her mother, Madhu Chopra, bravely confronted a driver who had taken an unfamiliar turn on a Delhi road late at night.
"I remember where her inside Ka Bloody Mary came out once we were in a cab, I must have been 11 years old or something...raat mein hum Delhi ke kisi hotel mein jaa rahe the ... we were driving and suddenly, I don't know, all I saw was my mother holding the throat of the driver. And apparently he took a turn that she didn't recognise and he said, 'nahi nahi main short cut le raha hun'...raat ke 11 baj rahe the mummy aur main akele the but she just held his neck from the back and said drive back to the main road," Priyanka vividly remembered.
She continued, "And she slapped him..She said, drive back to the main road. She was like, 'I'm here with my teenage daughter'...I had never seen that side of my mother. After that I never debated her on anything for the next four months. I don't know if my mom would've reacted like that if she was alone. But because I was with her, she was shaking when we got back to the hotel."
Besides this incident, Priyanka also shared how her experiences as a mother shaped her approach to the role of Bloody Mary in Prime Video's 'The Bluff'.
"It's very important when you're going on a journey with any protagonist to understand why they're doing what they're doing...chaar gunde khade hai aap maarte raho ..it's not interesting , but it becomes interesting when you have a reason of why. So for me that why really was how far would a mother go to protect her child. I had just had my daughter, she was two years old when I started filming the movie and agar uske peeche koi aaye tog main todh dungi na us insaan ko...woh jo woh feeling hoti and rage hota hai woh ek parent ko malum hota hai (if anyone came after her, I would have not spared that person. The feeling of rage, that protective instinct, is something every parent understands)," Priyanka shared.
In every scene, she imagined what she would do to protect her daughter, Malti, and her family.
"And every scene I just kept thinking about like what would I do to make sure that my child, my family is safe. And you know, that's why Mary's character, she's gritty.She plays dirty. She will hit you from anywhere. She'll make sure that her family is safe and that's why you feel like she's violent and grimy and has no apologies because you're coming after my child. And that is such a universal feeling," Priyanka emphasised.
'The Bluff', which is directed by Frank E. Flowers, will arrive on Prime Video on February 25.
In the film, Priyanka will be seen taking on high-octane action scenes against Karl Urban with swords and guns in full swing.
Opening up about her prep, the 'Citadel' star shared,"You know the skill set required in this, I've never worked with swords before. The only other movie which I had done where it was close was Bajirao Mastani. But I was playing the Peshwa's wife in it so I didn't have any action or stunts in that movie. So I had to learn how to work with blades and that too, with both hands. While being able to fight someone with the expertise of Karl who had done this in the Lord of Rings before he's done it in a lot of movies."
"So I wanted to make sure that I knew my job as well. So it took weeks and weeks of learning how to train, how to work with different kinds of rifles of the time, had to be filled up with gunpowder. And to do that in the middle of a scene while you are doing a big action sequence. It was a lot of detailing that was required, which is challenging and fun at the same time," Priyanka recalled.